The Biologically Inspired Abilities of Metallosupramolecular Architectures

Natural machinery such as proteins and enzymes can bind substrates and perform intricate functions on these molecules. This behavior is mediated by highly ordered but conformationally flexible structures dictated through favorable intra- and intermolecular interactions. Metallosupramolecular architectures (MSAs) function as synthetic machinery that are responsive to their environment, and display similar, but less impressive, abilities to their biological counterparts. Natural and synthetic systems share the properties of molecular recognition and catalysis facilitated through the often complex structures of these architectures. This review  article outlines the efforts to use metallosupramolecular structures to mimic the properties of biological enzymes and machines using important recent examples from the field.