Covalent Organic Frameworks with Record Pore Apertures

The pore apertures dictate the guest accessibilities of the pores, imparting diverse functions to porous materials. It is highly desired to construct crystalline porous polymers with predesignable and uniform mesopores that can allow large organic, inorganic, and biological molecules to enter. However, due to the ease of the formation of interpenetrated and/or fragile structures, the largest pore aperture reported in the metal–organic frameworks is 8.5 nm, and the value for covalent organic frameworks (COFs) is only 5.8 nm. Herein, we construct a series of COFs with record pore aperture values from 7.7 to 10.0 nm by designing building blocks with large conformational rigidness, planarity, and suitable local polarity. All of the obtained COFs possess eclipsed stacking structures, high crystallinity, permanent porosity, and high stability. As a proof of concept, we successfully employed these COFs to separate pepsin that is ∼7 nm in size from its crudes and to protect tyrosinase from heat-induced deactivation

Polyethylenimine-Coated Pt–Mn Nanostructures for Synergistic Photodynamic/Photothermal/Chemodynamic Tumor Therapy

How to develop antitumor nanodrugs with low toxicity and a good curative effect is an urgent problem in the current biomedicine field. In this work, different proposed composites were simulated by the finite difference time domain (FDTD) and COMSOL, including the material element, refractive index, particle size, and shape. Also, different machine learning algorithms are utilized to predict the absorbance at the near-infrared laser of 980 nm of different materials. Through train, validation, and test, the prediction of the as-synthesized Pt–Mn has high absorbance. Then, inorganic Pt–Mn was coated with PEI in order to improve their biocompatibility. Pt–Mn nanoparticles can generate ROS under the single 980 nm laser irradiation as a photodynamic therapy (PDT) agent and as a photothermal therapy (PTT) agent to heat the cells with a photothermal conversion efficiency of 23.6%. In addition, the electrochemical and in vitro chemodynamic therapy (CDT) experiments prove that Pt–Mn nanozymes could mimic the activity of peroxidase and enhance the Fenton reaction, thereby catalyzing excess H2O2 to produce hydroxyl free radicals and illustrating the potential to induce tumor cell apoptosis as the CDT agent in a weakly acidic tumor environment to complete high-efficiency chemokinetic therapy. Finally, Pt–Mn–PEI nanoparticles were used for PDT/PTT/CDT and the immune checkpoint inhibitor of anti-PD-L1 is injected in order to obtain the assistant immunotherapy, providing a potential choice to anticancer through effective synergistic cancer therapies

A Systematic Analysis on mRNA and MicroRNA Expression in Runting and Stunting Chickens

<div><p>Runting and stunting syndrome (RSS), which is characterized by lower body weight, widely occurs in broilers. Some RSS chickens simply exhibit slow growth without pathological changes. An increasing number of studies indicate that broiler strains differ in susceptibility to infectious diseases, most likely due to their genetic differences. The objective of this study was to detect the differentially expressed miRNAs and mRNAs in RSS and normal chickens. By integrating miRNA with mRNA expression profiling, potential molecular mechanisms involved in RSS could be further explored. Twenty-two known miRNAs and 1,159 genes were differentially expressed in RSS chickens compared with normal chickens (<i>P</i> < 0.05). qPCR validation results displayed similar patterns. The differentially expressed genes were primarily involved in energy metabolism pathways. The antisense transcripts were extensively expressed in chicken liver albeit with reduced abundance. Dual-luciferase reporter assay indicated that gga-miR-30b/c directly target <i>CARS</i> through binding to its 3′UTR. The miR-30b/c: <i>CARS</i> regulation mainly occurred in liver. In thigh muscle and the hypothalamus, miR-30b/c are expressed at higher levels in RSS chickens compared with normal chickens from 2 to 6 w of age, and notably significant differences are observed at 4 w of age.</p></div

Comparison of CARS protein in thigh muscle between RSS and normal chicken at 2, 4 and week 6.

<p>Western blot was conducted to monitor CARS protein differentiation between RSS and normal chickens at 2 (10-A), 4 (10-B) and 6 (10-C) w of age. N1–N3 were normal chickens while R1–R3 were RSS individuals.</p

Pathologic changes of RSS chicken.

<p>1-A, intestinal bleeding; 1-B, yolk malabsorption; 1-C, perihepatitis; 1-D, proventriculitis.</p

Dual-luciferase reporter assay for the 3′ UTR of <i>CARS</i> as the target site of miR-30b/c in vitro.

<p>pCDNA3.1-miR-30b/c plasmid were cotransfected with the pmirGLO-<i>CARS</i> 3′ UTR, pmirGLO- <i>CARS</i> 3′UTR mutation, or the control plasmid into DF-1 cells. The relative luciferase activities were measured.</p

Comparison of miR-30b/30c expression in thigh muscles and hypothalami of RSS and normal chickens at day 1 (D1), 2, 4 and 6 w of age.

<p>Quantitative RT-PCR assays of miR-30b and miR-30c expression using total RNA isolated from the chicken thigh muscle and hypothalamus at day1 (D1), 2, 4 and 6 w of age. “*” represents miR-30b or c was differentially expressed between RSS and normal chickens (<i>P</i> < 0.5).</p

Distribution of the genome-mapped sequence reads in small RNA libraries.

<p>Distribution of the genome-mapped sequence reads in small RNA libraries.</p

Comparison of the miR-30b/c and <i>CARS</i> expression in livers of RSS and normal chickens at 4, 5 and 6 w of age.

<p>6-A, comparison of miR-30b expression in livers. 6-B, comparison of miR-30c expression in livers. 6-C, comparison of <i>CARS</i> mRNA expression in livers.</p

The distribution of matches to gene ontology categories.

<p>In total, 1159 differentially expressed genes, identified using the DAVID v6.7, MAS3.0 and BGI-Cloud annotation tools, were enriched in seven pathways.</p