Insight into Surface Electronic Effects on Pd Nanostructures as Efficient Electrocatalysts

Although the unique properties of nanomaterials have endowed enzyme-mimic catalysts with broad applications, the development of catalysts still relies on trial-and-error strategies without predictive indicators. Surface electronic structures have rarely been studied in enzyme-mimic catalysts. Herein, we present a platform for understanding the impact of surface electronic structures on electrocatalysis toward H2O2 decomposition, using the Pd icosahedra (Pd ico), Pd octahedra (Pd oct) and Pd cubic nanocrystals as electrocatalysts. The electronic properties on Pd were modulated with a correlation of surface orientation. We revealed the relationship between the electronic properties and electrocatalytic performance, in which the surface electron accumulation can boost the electrocatalytic activity of the enzyme-mimic catalysts. As a result, the Pd icodimer exhibits the highest electrocatalytic and sensing efficiency. This work offers new perspectives for the investigation of structure–activity relationships and provides an effective knob for utilizing the surface electronic structures to boost the catalytic performance for enzyme-mimics

Structural and Compositional Modulation of Porous Carbon for High-Performance Photothermal Water Evaporation

In recent years, carbon materials have been widely used in the field of photothermal conversion due to their high chemical stability, wide range of absorbance and low cost. However, the realization mechanism of photothermal conversion of carbon materials is still not well revealed, which limits the design and preparation of efficient photothermal carbon materials. Herein, an Al-based porous coordination polymer was used to prepare porous carbon materials, and statistical analysis was carried out to investigate the relationship between the structure parameters of the samples and the photothermal conversion efficiency. We found that the photothermal conversion efficiency of the samples shows a highly positive correlation with the free radical concentration and a strong correlation with the degree of graphitization. The volume and surface area of micropores also have a significant influence on the photothermal conversion efficiency of the samples. An evaporator was assembled using the porous carbon material by electrospinning method, the evaporator possesses a high evaporation rate of 1.72 kg/(m2 h) and the evaporation efficiency of ca. 89%, suggesting the highly practical potential of this carbon material in water treatment

DataSheet1_An acridone-derived fluorescent off-on probe for detection and in vivo imaging of nitroreductase.pdf

Understanding the functions of enzymes in various physiological processes is important, but the design of signaling probes for fast analysis of enzymatic activity is particularly challenging. Herein, a fluorescence-enhanced probe, 10-methyl-2-nitro-acridone (MNA), was synthesized and applied to analyze nitroreductase (NTR) activity in vitro and in vivo. The detection mechanism is based on the nitro group in MNA reacting toward NTR with high reactivity and generating 10-methyl-2-amino- acridone (MAA) accompanied by an obvious fluorescence signal enhancement at 525 nm emission. The probe shows low cytotoxicity, fast response, and high selectivity and sensitivity with a limit of detection as low as 150 ng·mL−1. The probe was also employed for two-photon fluorescence imaging of NTR in zebrafish in vivo revealing the distribution of NTR. Versus existing NTR probes, the proposed probe shows favorable analytical performance including near-infrared light excitation with no other byproducts produced after the reaction. The superior properties of this signaling probe allow it to become a fluorescence imaging candidate in other biosystems.</p

Base-Stacking-Driven Catalytic Hairpin Assembly: A Nucleic Acid Amplification Reaction Using Electrode Interface as a “Booster” for SARS-CoV‑2 Point-of-Care Testing

Electrochemical DNA (E-DNA) biosensors based on interface-mediated hybridization reactions are promising for point-of-care testing (POCT). However, the low efficiency of target recycle amplification and the steric hindrance at the electrode interface limit their sensing performance. Herein, we propose a base-stacking-driven catalytic hairpin assembly (BDCHA), a nucleic acid amplification reaction strategy, for POCT. The introduction of the base-stacking effect in this strategy increases the thermodynamic stability of the product, thereby effectively improving the recycling efficiency. Also, it enables the interface-mediated hybridization to maintain stability with even fewer bases in the reaction-binding domain, hence minimizing DNA secondary structure formation or intertwining at the electrode surface and ameliorating the steric hindrance limitation. The introduced base-stacking effect makes the electrode serve as a “booster” by integrating the advantages of homogeneous and heterogeneous reactions, giving BDCHA an increased reaction rate of about 20-fold, compared to the conventional catalytic hairpin assembly. As a proof of concept, our BDCHA was applied in constructing a portable E-DNA biosensor for the detection of a SARS-CoV-2 N gene sequence fragment. A simple 30 min one-pot incubation is required, and the results can be readily read on a smartphone, making it portable and user-friendly for POCT

Enhanced bioremediation of organically combined contaminated soil by white rot fungal agent: physiological characteristics and contaminants degradation

Microbial remediation of organically combined contaminated sites is currently facing technical challenges. White rot fungi possess broad-spectrum degradation capabilities, but most of the studies are conducted on polluted water bodies, and few research focus on the degradation of combined organically contaminated soils. This study aimed to investigate the physiological changes in Trametes versicolor to enhance its simultaneous degradation ability towards benzo(a)pyrene (BaP) and TPH. The results demonstrated that Trametes versicolor, when subjected to liquid fermentation, achieved an 88.08% degradation of individual BaP within 7 days. However, under the combined contamination conditions of BaP and TPH, the BaP degradation rate decreased to 69.25%, while the TPH degradation rate was only 16.95%. Furthermore, the degradation rate of BaP exhibited a significant correlation with the extracellular protein concentration and laccase activities. Conversely, the TPH degradation rate exhibited a significant and positive correlation with the intracellular protein concentration. Solid-state fermentation utilizing fungal agents proved to be the most effective method for removing BaP and TPH, yielding degradation rates of 56.16% and 15.73% respectively within 60 days. Overall, Trametes versicolor demonstrated a commendable capability for degrading combined PAHs-TPH pollutants, thereby providing theoretical insights and technical support for the remediation of organically combined contaminated sites.</p

Interfacial Anchored Sesame Ball-like Ag/C To Guide Lithium Even Plating and Stripping Behavior

Lithium (Li) metal is a candidate anode for the next generation of high-energy density secondary batteries. Unfortunately, Li metal anodes (LMAs) are extremely reactive with electrolytes to accumulate uncontrolled dendrites and to generate unwanted parasitic electrochemical reactions. Much attention has been focused on carbon materials to address these issues. Ulteriorly, the failure mechanism investigation of lithiophilic sites on carbon materials has been not taken seriously. Herein, we design a new type of sesame ball-like carbon sphere (AgNPs@CS, an average diameter of ∼700 nm) with uniformly interfacial anchored silver nanoparticles (AgNPs), which is used as the dendrite-free Li metal anode host. This anchored structure significantly enhances reversible and chemical affinity of Li, effectively inhibiting “dead Li”. In addition, the protective effect of the carbon layer can avoid the damage of lithiophilic AgNPs in the carbon matrix. With a plating/striping capacity of 2 mA h cm–2, the AgNPs@CS electrode can be cycled over 2400 h at 0.5 mA cm–2. When the stripping voltage increases to 1 V, the AgNPs@CS electrode also enables excellent cycling stability to achieve over 260 cycles (1 mA cm–2, 1 mA h cm–2) and 130 cycles (2 mA cm–2, 1 mA h cm–2). This material by electrochemical characterization highlights the efficacy of this facile method for developing dendrite-free LMAs

Additional file 1 of Aloe derived nanovesicle as a functional carrier for indocyanine green encapsulation and phototherapy

Additional file 1: Table S1. Viscosity analysis by ubbelohde viscometer. Table S2. Identification of proteins found in gADNV. Table S3. Identification of proteins found in rADNVs. Table S4. The full name of lipids mentioned in Fig. 2H. Table S5. The content of phytochemicals in ADNVs relative to their protein mass. Fig. S1. Schematic diagram of ubbelohde viscometer. Fig. S2. The total vesicle protein (μg) per gram tissue isolated obtained by centri-fugating for different times. Fig. S3. The analysis of aloeemodin (A), aloesin (B) and β-sitosterol (C) in gADNVs and rADNVs by HPLC. Fig. S4. A) The Lips with the mean size of 91.9 nm analyzed by NTA. Insert was the TEM micrograph of Lips. B) Characterization of gADNVs and Lips by Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy. Fig. S5. Preparation and characterization of ICG/gADNVs and ICG/Lips. A) ICG loading efficiency analysis via changing the ratio of ICG and gADNVs. B) The particle size and morphology characterization of ICG/gADNVs by DLS and TEM. C) The particle size and morphology characterization of ICG/Lips by DLS and TEM. D) The zeta potential of ICG/gADNVs, ICG/Lips. Data in (A) and (D) represents mean values ± SD, n = 3. Fig. S6. A) Body weight changes of each group during phototherapy. B) Tumor volume changes of each group during therapy. C) H&E staining and TUNEL staining of tumor tissue in each group. Scale bar is 50 μm. D) Photos of mice showing the tumor growth at the first day and the 14th day under various conditions. Therein, ICG, ICG/Lips and ICG/gADNVs were the freshly prepare groups, ICG (+), ICG/Lips (+) and ICG/gADNVs (+) were the 30 days stored groups. Data in (B) represent mean values ± SD, n = 5. Statistical differences were analyzed by two-tailed student’s t-test. ****p < 0.0001

Sensitive, Highly Stable, and Anti-Fouling Electrode with Hexanethiol and Poly‑A Modification for Exosomal microRNA Detection

It remains a huge challenge to integrate the sensitivity, stability, reproducibility, and anti-fouling ability of electrochemical biosensors for practical applications. Herein, we propose a self-assembled electrode combining hexanethiol (HT), poly-adenine (poly-A), and cholesteryl-modified DNA to meet this challenge. HT can tightly pack at the electrode interface to form a hydrophobic self-assembled monolayer (SAM), effectively improving the stability and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of electrochemical detection. Cholesteryl-modified DNA was immobilized at the electrode through the hydrophobic interaction with HT to avoid the competition between the SAM and the DNA probe on the gold site. Thus, the assembly efficiency and uniformity of the DNA probe as well as the detection reproducibility were increased remarkedly. Poly-A was added on the HT assembled electrode to occupy the unreacted sites of gold to further enhance the anti-fouling ability. The combination of HT and poly-A allows the electrode to ensure favorable anti-fouling ability without sacrificing the detection performance. On this basis, we proposed a dual-signal amplification electrochemical biosensor for the detection of exosomal microRNAs, which showed excellent sensitivity with a detection limit down to 1.46 aM. Importantly, this method has been successfully applied to detect exosomal microRNA-21 in cells and human serum samples, proving its potential utility in cancer diagnosis

A Gentle Introduction to Bayesian Network Meta-Analysis Using an Automated R Package

Network meta-analysis is an extension of standard meta-analysis. It allows researchers to build a network of evidence to compare multiple interventions that may have not been compared directly in existing publications. With a Bayesian approach, network meta-analysis can be used to obtain a posterior probability distribution of all the relative treatment effects, which allows for the estimation of relative treatment effects to quantify the uncertainty of parameter estimates, and to rank all the treatments in the network. Ranking treatments using both direct and indirect evidence can provide guidance to policy makers and clinicians for making decisions. The purpose of this paper is to introduce fundamental concepts of Bayesian network meta-analysis (BNMA) to researchers in psychology and social sciences. We discuss several essential concepts of BNMA, including the assumptions of homogeneity and consistency, the fixed and random effects models, prior specification, and model fit evaluation strategies, while pointing out some issues and areas where researchers should use caution in the application of BNMA. Additionally, using an automated R package, we provide a step-by-step demonstration on how to conduct and report the findings of BNMA with a real dataset of psychological interventions extracted from PubMed.</p

DataSheet_1_High Levels of DEAH-Box Helicases Relate to Poor Prognosis and Reduction of DHX9 Improves Radiosensitivity of Hepatocellular Carcinoma.pdf

BackgroundLiver hepatocellular carcinoma (LIHC), one of the most common primary malignancies, exhibits high levels of molecular and clinical heterogeneity. Increasing evidence has confirmed the important roles of some RNA helicase families in tumor development, but the function of the DEAH-box RNA helicase family in LIHC therapeutic strategies has not yet been clarified.MethodsThe LIHC dataset was downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). Consensus clustering was applied to group the patients. Least absolute shrinkage and selection operator Cox regression and univariate and multivariate Cox regression were used to develop and validate a prognostic risk model. The Tumor Immune Estimation Resource and Tumor Immune Single Cell Hub databases were used to explore the role of DEAH-box RNA helicases in LIHC immunotherapy. In vitro experiments were performed to investigate the role of DHX9 in LIHC radiosensitivity.ResultsTwelve survival-related DEAH-box RNA helicases were identified. High helicase expression levels were associated with a poor prognosis and clinical features. A prognostic model comprising six DEAH-box RNA helicases (DHX8, DHX9, DHX34, DHX35, DHX38, and DHX57) was constructed. The risk score of this model was found to be an independent prognostic indicator, and LIHC patients with different prognosis were distinguished by the model in the training and test cohorts. DNA damage repair pathways were also enriched in patients with high-risk scores. The six DEAH-box RNA helicases in the risk model were substantially related to innate immune cell infiltration and immune inhibitors. In vitro experiments showed that DHX9 knockdown improved radiosensitivity by increasing DNA damage.ConclusionThe DEAH-box RNA helicase signature can be used as a reliable prognostic biomarker for LIHC. In addition, DHX9 may be a definitive indicator and therapeutic target in radiotherapy and immunotherapy for LIHC.</p