The Steady March toward Biomimetic Nanoelectronics.

Steady progress is being made in unveiling nature's long-range charge transport mechanisms in redox proteins and in the development of versatile self-assembling scaffolds and de novo proteins by design-two separate fields that soon may intersect to yield the first artificial bioelectronic wires. Here, we summarize compelling developments in these areas that put a spotlight on the prospect of their convergence, featuring, in particular, work by Dai et al. in this issue of ACS Nano that illustrates success in intentional design with nuanced control, binding multiple c-type hemes into a specific ordered array bearing the essential hallmarks of heme chains in bacterial multiheme cytochromes.