Rather than attempting to reinvent nature as many of the early ideas about nanotechnology proposed, groups around the world are finding ways of making use of natures expertise to produce materials from the bottom up. Last year the biological entity of choice was the diatom, this year it may well be the sponge.
Before anyone gets too excited and starts dashing off articles on how sponges are set to revolutionise the semiconductor industry, its worth reading down to the bottom of the article for the caveats. As always, its a case of observe, understand, and then try to figure how to harness natures nanoscale expertise. The point is that nature does all of this at room temperature under ambient conditions, which is certainly not how we currently produce materials.