Advances in high-throughput, high-capacity nonwoven membranes for chromatography in downstream processing: A review

: Nonwoven membranes are highly engineered fibrous materials that can be manufactured on a large scale from a wide range of different polymers, and their surfaces can be modified using a large variety of different chemistries and ligands. The fiber diameters, surface areas, pore sizes, total porosities, and thicknesses of the nonwoven mats can be carefully controlled, providing many opportunities for creative approaches for the development of novel membranes with unique properties to meet the needs of the future of downstream processing. Fibrous membranes are already finding use in ultrafiltration, microfiltration, depth filtration, and, more recently, in membrane chromatography for product capture and impurity removal. This article summarizes the various methods of manufacturing nonwoven fabrics, and the many methods available for the modification of the fiber surfaces. It also reviews recent studies focused on the use of nonwoven fabric devices in membrane chromatography and provides some perspectives on the challenges that need to be overcome to increase binding capacities, decrease residence times, and reduce pressure drops so that eventually they can replace resin column chromatography in downstream process operations

Polarization-Insensitive Metasurface for Harvesting Electromagnetic Energy with High Efficiency and Frequency Stability over Wide Range of Incidence Angles

In this paper, a polarization-insensitive metasurface, harvesting electromagnetic (EM) energy with high efficiency and frequency stability over a wide range of incidence angles, is proposed. The previously reported metasurfaces suffer from their maximum efficiencies shifting with the frequency when the incidence angle increases. By introducing a square-shaped metal via ring around the elements, the mutual coupling among adjacent cells is reduced so that the proposed metasurface can maintain maximum efficiency at the fixed operation frequency over a wide range of incidence angles. Furthermore, with one single harvesting via in the proper position for the connection of a harvesting load, the metasurface can collect EM energy effectively with both transverse electric (TE) and transverse magnetic (TM) polarizations in one single harvesting load. Compared with the reported metasurfaces, this proposed metasurface has a higher efficiency and fixed operation frequency within a wide incidence range. The energy distribution, harvesting efficiency, and surface current are simulated to investigate the operation mechanism of the proposed metasurface. The simulation results show that the maximum harvesting efficiency is 91% at 5.8 GHz for both TE and TM polarizations at the normal incidence. When the incident angle increases to 75°, the maximum efficiency is achieved at 5.79 GHz (0.19% shift), and the maximum efficiencies of TM and TE polarizations are 91% and 68%, respectively. A 5 × 5 array is fabricated and tested. The experimental results are in good agreement with the simulated ones

Towards implementation of novel single-use devices in integrated processes for biopharmaceuticals

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Transcriptome Profiling to Identify Genes Involved in Mesosulfuron-Methyl Resistance in Alopecurus aequalis

Non-target-site resistance (NTSR) to herbicides is a worldwide concern for weed control. However, as the dominant NTSR mechanism in weeds, metabolic resistance is not yet well-characterized at the genetic level. For this study, we have identified a shortawn foxtail (Alopecurus aequalis Sobol.) population displaying both TSR and NTSR to mesosulfuron-methyl and fenoxaprop-P-ethyl, yet the molecular basis for this NTSR remains unclear. To investigate the mechanisms of metabolic resistance, an RNA-Seq transcriptome analysis was used to find candidate genes that may confer metabolic resistance to the herbicide mesosulfuron-methyl in this plant population. The RNA-Seq libraries generated 831,846,736 clean reads. The de novo transcriptome assembly yielded 95,479 unigenes (averaging 944 bp in length) that were assigned putative annotations. Among these, a total of 29,889 unigenes were assigned to 67 GO terms that contained three main categories, and 14,246 unigenes assigned to 32 predicted KEGG metabolic pathways. Global gene expression was measured using the reads generated from the untreated control (CK), water-only control (WCK), and mesosulfuron-methyl treatment (T) of R and susceptible (S). Contigs that showed expression differences between mesosulfuron-methyl-treated R and S biotypes, and between mesosulfuron-methyl-treated, water-treated and untreated R plants were selected for further quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) validation analyses. Seventeen contigs were consistently highly expressed in the resistant A. aequalis plants, including four cytochrome P450 monooxygenase (CytP450) genes, two glutathione S-transferase (GST) genes, two glucosyltransferase (GT) genes, two ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporter genes, and seven additional contigs with functional annotations related to oxidation, hydrolysis, and plant stress physiology. These 17 contigs could serve as major candidate genes for contributing to metabolic mesosulfuron-methyl resistance; hence they deserve further functional study. This is the first large-scale transcriptome-sequencing study to identify NTSR genes in A. aequalis that uses the Illumina platform. This work demonstrates that NTSR is likely driven by the differences in the expression patterns of a set of genes. The assembled transcriptome data presented here provide a valuable resource for A. aequalis biology, and should facilitate the study of herbicide resistance at the molecular level in this and other weed species

Stress-Induced Epinephrine Enhances Lactate Dehydrogenase A and Promotes Breast Cancer Stem-Like Cells

Chronic stress triggers activation of the sympathetic nervous system and drives malignancy. Using an immunodeficient murine system, we showed that chronic stress–induced epinephrine promoted breast cancer stem-like properties via lactate dehydrogenase A–dependent (LDHA-dependent) metabolic rewiring. Chronic stress–induced epinephrine activated LDHA to generate lactate, and the adjusted pH directed USP28-mediated deubiquitination and stabilization of MYC. The SLUG promoter was then activated by MYC, which promoted development of breast cancer stem-like traits. Using a drug screen that targeted LDHA, we found that a chronic stress–induced cancer stem-like phenotype could be reversed by vitamin C. These findings demonstrated the critical importance of psychological factors in promoting stem-like properties in breast cancer cells. Thus, the LDHA-lowering agent vitamin C can be a potential approach for combating stress-associated breast cancer

Analysis between ABO blood group and clinical outcomes in COVID-19 patients and the potential mediating role of ACE2

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has become the most common coronavirus that causes large-scale infections worldwide. Currently, several studies have shown that the ABO blood group is associated with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection and some studies have also suggested that the infection of COVID-19 may be closely related to the interaction between angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) and blood group antigens. However, the relationship between blood type to clinical outcome in critically ill patients and the mechanism of action is still unclear. The current study aimed to examine the correlation between blood type distribution and SARS-CoV-2 infection, progression, and prognosis in patients with COVID-19 and the potential mediating role of ACE2. With 234 patients from 5 medical centers and two established cohorts, 137 for the mild cohort and 97 for the critically ill cohort, we found that the blood type A population was more sensitive to SARS-CoV-2, while the blood type distribution was not relevant to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), acute kidney injury (AKI), and mortality in COVID-19 patients. Further study showed that the serum ACE2 protein level of healthy people with type A was significantly higher than that of other blood groups, and type O was the lowest. The experimental results of spike protein binding to red blood cells also showed that the binding rate of people with type A was the highest, and that of people with type O was the lowest. Our finding indicated that blood type A may be the biological marker for susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection and may be associated with potential mediating of ACE2, but irrelevant to the clinical outcomes including ARDS, AKI, and death. These findings can provide new ideas for clinical diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of COVID-19

Aquatic micro-pollutants removal with a biocatalytic membrane prepared by metal chelating affinity membrane chromatography

Biocatalytic membranes are promising to remove micro-pollutants in aqueous environment due to their mild and green operation condition. However, more efforts need to be devoted to improving their removal efficiency and stability. In this study, metal chelating affinity membrane chromatography (MCAMC) was used to construct a biocatalytic membrane by selectively capturing laccase from a crude fermentation broth. Metal ions had a significant effect on the activity of the immobilized laccase and copper ion was the best choice. A pH of 4.5 was selected for laccase adsorption and its loading seemed the same under flow rates from 0.5 to 10 mL min(-1) thanks to the inherent convective transport of membrane chromatography. The pH value and salt concentration in the storage buffer had an obvious effect on the stability of the immobilized laccase, and the prepared biocatalytic membrane retained 87% of initial activity after 20 days storage. When applying such membrane to micro-pollutant removal (taking bisphenol A (BPA) as an example), a high BPA removal efficiency (99.3%) could be obtained. The biocatalytic membranes could be operated at a high flux of 50 L m(-2) h(-1) without recycling the permeate into the feed, and its throughput and BPA removal rate were superior to the most results in the literature. However, BPA removal decline (from 99.6% to 56.6% after five cycles) occurred during the successive water treatment due to the membrane fouling caused by BPA polymerization products. Membrane regeneration could be achieved by simple elution-cleaning-reloading, and the laccase activity and BPA removal were fully recovered. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.</p

Article Evaluation of Lithium-Ion Battery Equivalent Circuit Models for State of Charge Estimation by an Experimental Approach

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