Efficient Conversion of Acetate to 3-Hydroxypropionic Acid by Engineered Escherichia coli

Acetate, which is an abundant carbon source, is a potential feedstock for microbial processes that produce diverse value-added chemicals. In this study, we produced 3-hydroxypropionic acid (3-HP) from acetate with engineered Escherichia coli. For the efficient conversion of acetate to 3-HP, we initially introduced heterologous mcr (encoding malonyl-CoA reductase) from Chloroflexus aurantiacus. Then, the acetate assimilating pathway and glyoxylate shunt pathway were activated by overexpressing acs (encoding acetyl-CoA synthetase) and deleting iclR (encoding the glyoxylate shunt pathway repressor). Because a key precursor malonyl-CoA is also consumed for fatty acid synthesis, we decreased carbon flux to fatty acid synthesis by adding cerulenin. Subsequently, we found that inhibiting fatty acid synthesis dramatically improved 3-HP production (3.00 g/L of 3-HP from 8.98 g/L of acetate). The results indicated that acetate can be used as a promising carbon source for microbial processes and that 3-HP can be produced from acetate with a high yield (44.6% of the theoretical maximum yield).11Ysciescopu

Vertical Alignment of Liquid Crystals on Phenylphenoxymethyl-Substituted Polystyrene—PS Derivatives Structurally Similar to LC Molecules

A series of polystyrene derivatives containing precursors of liquid crystal (LC) molecules, phenylphenoxymethyl-substituted polystyrene (PPHE#; # = 5, 15, 25, 50, 75, and 100)—where # is the molar content of 4-phenylphenol using polymer modification reactions—were prepared in order to examine the effect of the polymer film, which possess similar LC molecular structure on the LC alignment properties. It was found that the Tg values of the PPHE# were higher than 100 °C due to their aromatic structure in the biphenyl-based PHE moiety. The LC cells fabricated with PPHE5 and PPHE15 films exhibited planar LC alignment. Conversely, LC molecules showed a vertical alignment in LC cells made using the polymer films with phenylphenoxymethyl side groups in the range of 25–100 mol %. The polar surface energies on the PPHE# films can be associated with the vertical LC alignment on the PPHE# films. For example, vertical LC alignment was exhibited when the polar surface energy of the polymer films was less than approximately 4.2 mJ/m2. Aligning stability was observed at 200 °C and UV irradiation of 20 J/cm2 for LC cells made using the PPHE100 film. Therefore, it was found that biphenyl, one of the LC precursors, modified polystyrene derivatives and can produce a next-generation vertical LC alignment system

D-vlog: Multimodal Vlog Dataset for Depression Detection

Detecting depression based on non-verbal behaviors has received great attention. However, most prior work on detecting depression mainly focused on detecting depressed individuals in laboratory settings, which are difficult to be generalized in practice. In addition, little attention has been paid to analyzing the non-verbal behaviors of depressed individuals in the wild. Therefore, in this paper, we present a multimodal depression dataset, D-Vlog, which consists of 961 vlogs (i.e., around 160 hours) collected from YouTube, which can be utilized in developing depression detection models based on the non-verbal behavior of individuals in real-world scenario. We develop a multimodal deep learning model that uses acoustic and visual features extracted from collected data to detect depression. Our proposed model employs the cross-attention mechanism to effectively capture the relationship across acoustic and visual features, and generates useful multimodal representations for depression detection. The extensive experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model significantly outperforms other baseline models. We believe our dataset and the proposed model are useful for analyzing and detecting depressed individuals based on non-verbal behavior

The Effect of Pre-Stretched Substrate on the Electrical Resistance of Printed Ag Nanowires

One-dimensional nanomaterials have drawn attention as an alternative electrode material for stretchable electronics. In particular, silver nanowires (Ag NWs) have been studied as stretchable electrodes for strain sensors, 3D electronics, and freeform-shaped electronic circuits. In this study, Ag NWs ink was printed on the pre-stretched silicone rubber film up to 40% in length using a drop-on-demand dispenser. After printing, silicone rubber film was released and stretched up to 20% as a cyclic test with 10-time repetition, and the ratios of the resistance of the stretched state to that of the released state (Rstretched/Rreleased) were measured at each cycle. For Ag NWs electrode printed on the pre-stretched silicone rubber at 30%, Rstretched/Rreleased at 10% and 20% strain was 1.05, and 1.57, respectively, which is significantly less than about 7 for Ag NWs at the 10% strain without pre-stretched substrate. In the case of 10% strain on the 30% pre-stretched substrate, the substrate is stretched and the contact points with Ag NWs were not changed much as the silicone rubber film stretched, which meant that Ag NWs may slide between other Ag NWs. Ag NWs electrode on the 40% pre-stretched substrate was stretched, strain was concentrated on the Ag NWs electrode and failure of electrode occurred, because cracks occurred at the surface of silicone rubber film when it was pre-stretched to 40%. We confirmed that printed Ag NWs on the pre-stretched film showed more contact points and less electric resistance compared to printed Ag NWs on the film without pre-stretching

Diclofenac: A Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug Inducing Cancer Cell Death by Inhibiting Microtubule Polymerization and Autophagy Flux

Diclofenac, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) used to treat inflammatory diseases induces cellular toxicity by increasing the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and impairing autophagic flux. In this study, we investigated whether diclofenac induces cancer cell death and the mechanism by which diclofenac causes cell death. We observed that diclofenac induces mitotic arrest with a half-maximal effective concentration of 170 μM and cell death with a half-maximal lethal dose of 200 µM during 18-h incubation in HeLa cells. Cellular microtubule imaging and in vitro tubulin polymerization assays demonstrated that treatment with diclofenac elicits microtubule destabilization. Autophagy relies on microtubule-mediated transport and the fusion of autophagic vesicles. We observed that diclofenac inhibits both phagophore movement, an early step of autophagy, and the fusion of autophagosomes and lysosomes, a late step of autophagy. Diclofenac also induces the fragmentation of mitochondria and the Golgi during cell death. We found that diclofenac induces cell death further in combination with 5-fuorouracil, a DNA replication inhibitor than in single treatment in cancer cells. Pancreatic cancer cells, which have high basal autophagy, are particularly sensitive to cell death by diclofenac. Our study suggests that microtubule destabilization by diclofenac induces cancer cell death via compromised spindle assembly checkpoints and increased ROS through impaired autophagy flux. Diclofenac may be a candidate therapeutic drug in certain type of cancers by inhibiting microtubule-mediated cellular events in combination with clinically utilized nucleoside metabolic inhibitors, including 5-fluorouracil, to block cancer cell proliferation

Enhancing the tyosine production from acetate in Escherichia coli by optimization of glyoxylate cycle

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Novel Online Three-Dimensional Separation Expands the Detectable Functional Landscape of Cellular Phosphoproteome

Protein phosphorylation is a prevalent post-translational modification that regulates essentially every aspect of cellular processes. Currently, liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) with an extensive offline sample fractionation and a phosphopeptide enrichment method is a best practice for deep phosphoproteome profiling, but balancing throughput and profiling depth remains a practical challenge. We present an online three-dimensional separation method for ultradeep phosphoproteome profiling that combines an online two-dimensional liquid chromatography separation and an additional gas-phase separation. This method identified over 100,000 phosphopeptides (>60,000 phosphosites) in HeLa cells during 1.5 days of data acquisition, and the largest HeLa cell phosphoproteome significantly expanded the detectable functional landscape of cellular phosphoproteome.N

Design of mutualistic microbial consortia for stable conversion of carbon monoxide to value-added chemicals

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Facile fabrication of flexible metal grid transparent electrode using inkjet-printed dot array as sacrificial layer

In this study, we introduce a flexible metal grid transparent electrode fabricated using a lift-off process. This transparent electrode consisting of metal thin film with punched-like pattern by hole array was fabricated with 8 um separations. The separation of inkjet-printed etching resistant ink droplets was controlled in order to investigate the relationship between its electrical and optical properties of the electrodes. The aluminum areal density was defined to predict the electrical and optical properties of different arrays. A high and uniform transmittance spectrum appears to extend broadly into the UV region. The figure of merit of the transparent electrode was investigated in order to determine its performance as a transparent electrode. Moreover, there was no significant change in the resistance after 7000 bending cycles, indicating that the array conductor had superior stability. We also demonstrate transparent touch screen panels fabricated using the transparent electrode.N