Amphiphilic molecules self-assemble into well-defined nanostructures such as spheres, plates, and fibers and are promising building blocks for bottom-up production of nanostructures. Because noncovalent interactions, such as hydrogen bonds and stacking bonds, drive self-assembly, the precise design of the building block molecules is critical to obtain the desired nanostructures. The double-stranded structure of DNA is held together by complementary base pairing and stabilized by stacking interactions between the bases; therefore, we can expect that well-defined structures can be obtained from nucleic acid–appended amphiphilic molecules by means of self-assembly directed by hydrogen bonds and stacking interactions similar to those in the DNA double helix. This review focuses on the construction and self-assembly mechanisms of diverse nanostructures obtained from nucleic acid–appended amphiphilic molecules.

One of the most important roles of lipid molecules in biological system is to form biomembranes as the molecular stages for systematic bio-processes; materials transformation, energy conversion and signal transduction. Recent advances in biological sciences guided us to a challenging research field so-called synthesizing life. In this review article, research topics in this field were mentioned focusing to the following viewpoints; how to design artificial cell membranes and how to introduce functions into the membranes. The guidepost for molecular design of lipids to form artificial cell membranes and the strategies for their static and dynamic morphological control were proposed. Lipid membranes were derived to nanomaterials through hybridization of lipid molecules with biological or artificial functional molecular units. The artificial cell membranes have potential as functional nanodevices for biomedical application, molecular communication, etc.

Exosomes are small membrane vesicles of 30-100 nm in diameter and contain biological macromolecules such as proteins and nucleic acids. Exosomes are secreted from various types of cells and their characteristics depend on cell types. Exosomes are present in various body fluids including blood and urine. Recent research revealed that exosomes play important roles in intercellular communication by transporting their contents to exosome-recipient cells, so that the roles of exosomes in various biological events such as tumor metastasis and immune response have recently been attracted huge attention. As exosomes share the characteristics with their producing cells, exosomes are expected to be used as a biomarker for diagnosis. Moreover, several attempts have been made to use exosomes as drug delivery system (DDS). In this review, we first describe the characteristics and secretory pathway of exosomes. Then, the involvement of exosomes in biological events and application of exosomes to diagnosis and DDS is summarized. Besides, we introduce our recent results about the development of exosome-based DDS.