A century after Staudinger's Macromolecular Hypothesis, macromolecular science is entering a new era. In this perspective, we discuss size effects and the nature of macromolecules. With increasing molecular size, the complexity increases dramatically in terms of both primary chemical structure and assembled physical structure, as exemplified by the information-bearing molecules like DNA, RNA, and proteins. The collective and cooperative interaction, as governed by different physical rules at different scales of length, time, and energy, leads to emergent properties of a macromolecule beyond the sum of its components and this is why size does matter. The increasingly open and inclusive macromolecular science calls for a multi-interdisciplinary forum for such studies and this is where Giant could make a big difference with a unified and updated perspective on the nature of macromolecules.

在施陶丁格的大分子假设提出一个世纪之后，大分子科学正在进入一个新时代。从这个角度，我们讨论了大小效应和大分子的性质。随着分子大小的增加，就一级化学结构和组装的物理结构而言，复杂性都急剧增加，例如像DNA，RNA和蛋白质之类的信息分子。在不同的长度，时间和能量尺度上，由不同的物理规则支配的集体和合作相互作用导致大分子的新兴性质超出了其组成部分的总和，这就是大小如此重要的原因。日益开放和包容的大分子科学要求为此类研究提供一个跨学科的论坛，这就是巨人 对大分子的性质有了统一和更新的观点，可能会大有作为。