
Inspired by nature: the science that could transform medicine - pmcpinto
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/oct/25/bioinspiration-thrilling-new-science-could-transform-medicine
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M_Grey
Right, we've never looked at nature before, Penicillin just happened. /s

The difference isn't that people are looking for natural inspiration, although
that makes for a great headline. Really, the changes are in the ability to
engineer materials, tissues, and the like to fit those paradigms. People had
great ideas in the 'naturalistic' vein for a long time, but lacked the means
to make it work.

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HillaryBriss
love the article. hydrophobic glue and so on. interesting stuff. i upvoted it.

but i'm not convinced that inspiration from nature to medicine is a new thing.

haven't researchers been looking at the techniques plants and fungi use to
combat bacteria for a long time, for example?

or didn't Pasteur get inspired by nature to create vaccines with the cowpox vs
smallpox phenomenon?

or weren't more recent attempts to derive an anti-coagulant from the
substances used by blood sucking leeches also inspired by nature?

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dekhn
Velcro was inspired by burrs stuck in a dog coat. Took the inventor ages to
commercialize.

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kawera
I went to TED 2005 in Monterey where most talks were related to that year's
theme, "Inspired by Nature". For those interested, I do recommend a wonderful
talk by prof. Robert Full, "The sticky wonder of gecko feet":
[http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_full_on_animal_movement#t-24...](http://www.ted.com/talks/robert_full_on_animal_movement#t-244505)

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dharma1
Love this. Evolution has had a very long time to arrive at a huge corpus of
various nanoengineering solutions, we should use as much of it as we can.

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agumonkey
And the future was under our nose all along. Finally.

