Introduction: A survey of proteins in nanobioelectronics

The idea of using proteins to assemble hybrid electronic devices stems frommolecular electronics [1] and, as such, it is intimately connected with theadvent of nanosciences and nanotechnologies, dating back to the early 1990s.Since then, much technological effort but less scientific effort has beendeployed to try to implement devices that take advantage of the peculiarfeatures of proteins.

A technologist’s standpoint is that of regarding proteins asself-contained, nanometer-sized functional units, highly specialized andefficient in performing a certain functional task. Their efficiency istraced back to the fact that, being active parts of living beings, proteinsare taking advantage of billions of years of natural evolution inspecializing towards a given activity.

This way of thinking, which one can often encounter in ritten or spokenaccounts, appears to be questionable in light of a rather less naïveunderstanding of the theory of evolution, but is perhaps a good enoughstarting point to understand the historical motivations which led to theremarkable interest of a interdisciplinary part of the scientific communityin the use of proteins for assembling electronic devices.

The other aspect motivating the interest in proteins as elements inelectronic circuits is their size.