Design and construction of artificial photoresponsive protocells capable of converting day light to chemical energy

Design and construction of artificial photoresponsive protocells based on the encapsulation and activation of metallized peptide/porphyrin self-assembled nanofilaments within silica-nanoparticle-stabilized colloidosomes.</p

Synthesis and applications of porous non-silica metal oxide submicrospheres

© 2016 Royal Society of Chemistry. Nowadays the development of submicroscale products of specific size and morphology that feature a high surface area to volume ratio, well-developed and accessible porosity for adsorbates and reactants, and are non-toxic, biocompatible, thermally stable and suitable as synergetic supports for precious metal catalysts is of great importance for many advanced applications. Complex porous non-silica metal oxide submicrospheres constitute an important class of materials that fulfill all these qualities and in addition, they are relatively easy to synthesize. This review presents a comprehensive appraisal of the methods used for the synthesis of a wide range of porous non-silica metal oxide particles of spherical morphology such as porous solid spheres, core-shell and yolk-shell particles as well as single-shell and multi-shell particles. In particular, hydrothermal and low temperature solution precipitation methods, which both include various structure developing strategies such as hard templating, soft templating, hydrolysis, or those taking advantage of Ostwald ripening and the Kirkendall effect, are reviewed. In addition, a critical assessment of the effects of different experimental parameters such as reaction time, reaction temperature, calcination, pH and the type of reactants and solvents on the structure of the final products is presented. Finally, the practical usefulness of complex porous non-silica metal oxide submicrospheres in sensing, catalysis, biomedical, environmental and energy-related applications is presented

Development of Functional Nanomaterials for Applications in Chemical Engineering

Nanomaterials are materials with particle sizes of less than 100 nm in at least one of their dimensions [...

Recent Development of Nanomaterials for Chemical Engineering

There has been an explosive growth in research on nanomaterials since the late 1980s and early 1990s [...

Application of Peptides in Construction of Nonviral Vectors for Gene Delivery

Gene therapy, which aims to cure diseases by knocking out, editing, correcting or compensating abnormal genes, provides new strategies for the treatment of tumors, genetic diseases and other diseases that are closely related to human gene abnormalities. In order to deliver genes efficiently to abnormal sites in vivo to achieve therapeutic effects, a variety of gene vectors have been designed. Among them, peptide-based vectors show superior advantages because of their ease of design, perfect biocompatibility and safety. Rationally designed peptides can carry nucleic acids into cells to perform therapeutic effects by overcoming a series of biological barriers including cellular uptake, endosomal escape, nuclear entrance and so on. Moreover, peptides can also be incorporated into other delivery systems as functional segments. In this review, we referred to the biological barriers for gene delivery in vivo and discussed several kinds of peptide-based nonviral gene vectors developed for overcoming these barriers. These vectors can deliver different types of genetic materials into targeted cells/tissues individually or in combination by having specific structure&ndash;function relationships. Based on the general review of peptide-based gene delivery systems, the current challenges and future perspectives in development of peptidic nonviral vectors for clinical applications were also put forward, with the aim of providing guidance towards the rational design and development of such systems

Peptide-coordination self-assembly for the precise design of theranostic nanodrugs

Peptide-coordination self-assembly demonstrates great potential in the precise design of next-generation theranostic nanodrugs. It has the advantages of high biosafety, versatile system design, easy control over the self-assembled structures, facile incorporation of various functionalities, and greatly enhanced stability of the complex materials as well as their stimuli-responsive assembly and disassembly. All of these merits promote the construction of targeted theranostic systems with highly integrated diagnostic and therapeutic functionalities. This review seeks to provide an up-to-date conclusive observation about the field of peptide-coordination self-assembly for theranostic applications to guide related research. It covers the general principles of peptide-coordination self-assembly for producing structures with controlled morphologies and properties, the strategies for constructing peptide/metal hybrid materials for diagnostic and therapeutic aims, and, more specifically, the strategies and design rules for integrating various functionalities into a single platform for theranostics. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Active modulation of states of pre-stress in self-assembled short peptide gels

Peptide hydrogels are excellent candidates for medical therapeutics due to their tuneable viscoelastic properties, however, in vivo they will be subject to various osmotic pressures, temperature changes, and biological co-solutes, which could alter their performance. Peptide hydrogels formed from the synthetic peptide I₃K have a temperature-induced hardening of their shear modulus by a factor of 2. We show that the addition of uncross-linked poly­(<i>N</i>-isopropylacrylamide) chains to the peptide gels increases the gels’ temperature sensitivity by 3 orders of magnitude through the control of osmotic swelling and cross-linking. Using machine learning combined with single-molecule fluorescence microscopy, we measured the modulation of states of prestress in the gels on the level of single peptide fibers. A new self-consistent mixture model was developed to simultaneously quantify the energy and the length distributions of the states of prestress. Switching the temperature from 20 to 40 °C causes 6-fold increases in the number of states of prestress. At the higher temperature, many of the fibers experience constrained buckling with characteristic small wavelength oscillations in their curvature

Characterization of photosystem I from spinach: effect of solution pH.

Our previous work has demonstrated the isolation of photosystem I (PSI) from spinach using ultrafiltration with a final purity of 84%. In order to get a higher purity of PSI and more importantly to develop a practical bioseparation process, key physiochemical properties of PSI and their dependence on operational parameters must be assessed. In this study, the effect of solution pH, one of the most important operating parameters for membrane process, on the property of PSI was examined. Following the isolation of crude PSI from spinach using n-dodecyl-beta-D: -maltoside as detergent, the isoelectric point, aggregation size, zeta potential, low-temperature fluorescence, atomic force microscopy imaging, secondary structure, and thermal stability were determined. Solution pH was found to have a significant effect on the activity, aggregation size and thermal stability of PSI. The results also suggested that the activity of PSI was related to its aggregation size