Synthetic biology on acetogenic bacteria for highly efficient conversion of c1 gases to biochemicals

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Synthesis gas, which is mainly produced from fossil fuels or biomass gasification, consists of C1 gases such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and methane as well as hydrogen. Acetogenic bacteria (acetogens) have emerged as an alternative solution to recycle C1 gases by converting them into value-added biochemicals using the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway. Despite the advantage of utilizing acetogens as biocatalysts, it is difficult to develop industrial-scale bioprocesses because of their slow growth rates and low productivities. To solve these problems, conventional approaches to metabolic engineering have been applied; however, there are several limitations owing to the lack of required genetic bioparts for regulating their metabolic pathways. Recently, synthetic biology based on genetic parts, modules, and circuit design has been actively exploited to overcome the limitations in acetogen engineering. This review covers synthetic biology applications to design and build industrial platform acetogens

: A novel gene fusion in malignant melanoma

Oncogenic gene fusions have been identified in many cancers, and many serve as druggable targets for therapy. Fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR) gene aberration is known to be associated with tumor progression and resistance to anticancer therapy. Here we report the first case of malignant melanoma harboring a FGFR3-TACC3 (transforming acidic coiled-coil containing protein 3) fusion, which appears to be a promising potential therapeutic target

Closing the loop: recycling of MAPbI3 perovskite solar cells†

Closed-loop recycling is crucial in the rapidly expanding era of photovoltaic deployment. Yet, the recycling of commercial silicon photovoltaic modules presents challenges due to laborious component separation. In contrast, layers in solution-processed solar cells can be separated with relative ease through selective dissolution. In this study, we report on the recovery of every layer in a planar MAPbI3 perovskite solar cell using a layer-by-layer solvent extraction approach, followed by purification or modification to restore quality. This method potentially allows for up to 99.97% recycled mass, thereby conserving resources and reducing waste. We assessed material quality by substituting each fresh material with its recycled equivalent during solar cell production. Subsequently, solar cells were fabricated with either several or all layers comprising recycled materials. Every combination yielded efficiency comparable to cells constructed exclusively with fresh materials, demonstrating the efficacy of the developed recycling process. Our mass and value analysis highlights ITO glass has the highest recycling priority and the need for circular utilization for by-product chemicals, especially cleaning agents. Techno-economic projections suggest that the proposed recycling procedure has the potential to afford substantial cost savings. In the lab, recycling could reduce material costs by up to 63.7%, in industrial manufacturing by up to 61.4%. A life cycle assessment reveals this recycling method can reduce environmental impacts.Closed-loop recycling of MAPbI3 solar cells: maintaining performance while enhancing economic and environmental benefits

Insulin Fact Sheet in Type 1 and 2 Diabetes Mellitus and Trends of Antidiabetic Medication Use in Insulin Users with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: 2002 to 2019

Background This study investigated the trends of insulin use among Korean patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Changes in prescription of antidiabetic medications in T2DM patients taking insulin therapy were evaluated. Methods We analyzed data from the National Health Insurance Service database in Korea to evaluate the prevalence of insulin users and trends of insulin use in T1DM and T2DM patients from January 2002 to December 2019. We also investigated numbers and types of antidiabetic medications in insulin users with T2DM. Results The overall total number of insulin users increased from 2002 to 2019, reaching 348,254 for T2DM and 20,287 for T1DM in 2019 compared with 109,974 for T2DM and 34,972 for T1DM in 2002. The proportion of patients using basal analogs and short acting analogs have increased and those using human insulin, premixed insulin, or biphasic human insulin have decreased (rapid acting analogs: 71.85% and 24.12% in T1DM and T2DM, respectively, in 2019; basal analogs: 76.75% and 75.09% in T1DM and T2DM, respectively, in 2019). The use of other antidiabetic medication in addition to insulin increased for T2DM, especially in dual therapy, reaching up to 52.35% in 2019 compared with 16.72% in 2002. Conclusion The proportion of the patients using basal or rapid acting analogs increased among all insulin users in both T1DM and T2DM patients. Among patients with T2DM, the proportion of patients using antidiabetic medications in addition to insulin was significantly increased compared to those who used insulin alone

No association between the IL28B SNP and response to peginterferon plus ribavirin combination treatment in Korean chronic hepatitis C patients

Background/AimsThere are few available data regarding the association between the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of the gene encoding interleukin 28B (IL28B) and a sustained virologic response (SVR) to peginterferon (PEG-IFN) plus ribavirin (RBV) therapy in Korean chronic hepatitis C patients.MethodsThis was a retrospective cohort study of 156 patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection who received combination treatment of PEG-IFN plus RBV. Blood samples from these patients were analyzed to identify the IL28B SNPs at rs12979860, rs12980275, rs8099917, and rs8103142. Association analyses were performed to evaluate the relationships between each IL28B SNP and SVRs.ResultsSeventy six patients with HCV genotype 1 and 80 with genotype non-1 were enrolled. The frequencies of rs12979860 CC and CT genotypes were 90.4% and 9.6%, respectively; those of rs12980275 AA and AG genotypes were 87.2% and 12.8%, respectively; those of rs8099917 TT and TG genotypes were 92.3% and 7.7%, respectively; and those of rs8103142 TT and CT genotypes were 90.4% and 9.6%, respectively. Among the patients with HCV genotype 1, the SVR rates were 69.7% and 80.0% for rs12979860 CC and CT, respectively (P=0.71). Among the HCV genotype non-1 patients, SVR rates were 88.0% and 100% for rs12979860 CC and CT (P=1.00), respectively.ConclusionsGenotypes of the IL28B SNP that are known to be favorable were present in most of the Korean patients with chronic hepatitis C in this study. Moreover, the IL28B SNP did not influence the SVR rate in either the HCV genotype 1 or non-1 patients. Therefore, IL28B SNP analysis might be not useful for the initial assessment, prediction of treatment outcomes, or treatment decision-making of Korean chronic hepatitis C patients

B and T Lymphocyte Attenuator Down-regulation by HIV-1 Depends on Type I Interferon and Contributes to T-Cell Hyperactivation

Background. Nonspecific T-cell hyperactivation is the main driving force for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)–1 disease progression, but the reasons why the excess immune response is not properly shut off are poorly defined

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Potassium influenced phenylalanine ammonia-lyase, peroxidases and polyphenol oxidases in Fusarium graminearum infected maize (Zea mays L.)

Potassium (K) fertilizer is important for the reduction of many plant diseases, e.g., stalk rot of maize (Zea mays L.). However, the mechanism by which potassium promotes resistance to pathogens is not completely understood. Fusarium graminearum, which is the main pathogen causing stalk rot in maize, was selected to study the effect of potassium on phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (PAL; EC 4.3.1.5), peroxidase (POD; EC 1.11.1.7) and polyphenol oxidase (PPO; EC 1.14.18.1), at both the physiological and molecular level. Gene expression was quantified by real-time reverse transcription PCR (Q-RT-PCR) technology. The incidence of maize stalk rot was significantly reduced by K application. After inoculation with F. graminearum, the potassium concentration increased in susceptible organs. Potassium induced the expression of and sustained elevated activities of PAL, POD, and PPO when maize was inoculated with the pathogen. The expression of the corresponding genes was also stimulated by potassium. This study demonstrated that potassium addition enhanced maize resistance to stalk rot by activating the expression and activity of defense-related enzymes involved in phenol metabolism

Nutrient uptake and utilization of nutrient management for wheat and maize rotation system in North Central China

Over-application of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P), and insufficient supply of potassium (K), have been considered as reasons for restriction of yield increases in North China Plain. Field experiments were conducted to evaluate the effects of nutrient management on yield, nutrient uptake and utilization in Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong and Henan provinces, where the typical winter wheat–summer maize rotation system in North Central China is practiced. The results indicated that improved nutrient management by balanced fertilization based on soil testing and target yield (the optimum treatment, OPT) optimized grain yield, nutrient uptake and nutrient use efficiency compared with those for farmer’s practice (FP). By adoption of our improved nutrient management strategy, yield increased by 0.8–13.7% for wheat and 5.8–18.5% for maize separately and, moreover, N and P input declined by 13% (266 kg N ha–1) and 45% (430 kg P2O5 ha–1), and K input increased by 43% (265 kg K2O ha–1) at the four sites over the FP. The OPT increased partial factor productivity of nitrogen (PFPN) and agronomic efficiency of nitrogen (AEN) at all sites with the exception of Shandong where N rates were generally higher than elsewhere, and improved nitrogen recovery efficiency (REN) across all four sites in this study. The results from this study demonstrated that there is still need and great potential to improve PFPN, AEN and REN further in this intensive winter wheat–summer maize rotation system

Study of Sodium Chlorate Chiral Symmetry Breaking via Molecular Simulation

Sodium chlorate is representative material of chiral symmetry breaking study. And the chiral breaking methods are widely applied to many scientific field. In this study, we investigate and demonstrate how chiral breaking happened in stirred environment which is one of essential condition. Under this condition, supersaturated sodium chlorate solution can generate crystal having homochirality about 99%. To study this phenomena we have used molecular dynamics(MD) and density functional theory(DFT). So far, we modified the forcefield of reference study and successfully simulated and modeled the NaClO3 crystal of (d), (l) and chiral form and solution. By using this, crystallization phenomena is observed. And by mimic the shear effect in solution, we have used the confined shear task in forcite module. As result, it is demonstrated that shear have effect of amplifying the chiral imbalance and that is expected as the reason of making homochirality ultimately