Gene dysregulation in peripheral blood of moyamoya disease and comparison with other vascular disorders.

ObjectiveMoyamoya disease (MMD) is a chronic occlusive cerebrovascular disease with unknown etiology, sharing many similar clinical symptoms with other vascular disorders. This study aimed to investigate gene dysregulation in peripheral blood of MMD and compare it with other vascular disorders.MethodsTranscriptomic profiles of 12 MMD patients and 8 healthy controls were obtained using RNA sequencing. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified and several were validated by quantitative real-time PCR in independent samples. Biological pathway enrichment analysis of DEGs and deconvolution of leukocyte subsets in peripheral blood were performed. Expression profiles for other vascular diseases were downloaded from public database and consistent DEGs were calculated. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) was conducted to compare gene dysregulation pattern between MMD and other vascular diseases.ResultsA total of 533 DEGs were identified for MMD. Up-regulated genes were mainly involved in extracellular matrix (ECM) organization, whereas down-regulated genes were primarily associated with inflammatory and immune responses. As for cell populations, significantly increased naïve B cells and naïve CD4 cells as well as obviously decreased resting natural killer cells were observed in peripheral blood of MMD patients. GSEA analysis indicated that only up-regulated genes of ischemic stroke and down-regulated genes of coronary artery disease and myocardial infarction were enriched in up-regulated and down-regulated genes of MMD, respectively.ConclusionDysregulated genes in peripheral blood of MMD mainly played key roles in ECM organization, inflammatory and immune responses. This gene dysregulation pattern was specific compared with other vascular diseases. Besides, naïve B cells, naïve CD4 cells and resting natural killer cells were aberrantly disrupted in peripheral blood of MMD patients. These results will help elucidate the complicated pathogenic mechanism of MMD

Inhibition of Fat Accumulation by Hesperidin in Caenorhabditis elegans

Hesperidin, abundant in citrus fruits, has a wide range of pharmacological effects, including anticarcinogenic, anti-inflammatory, antioxidative, radioprotective, and antiviral activities. However, relatively few studies on the effects of hesperidin on lipid metabolism have been reported. Here, using Caenorhaditis elegans as a model animal, we found that 100 μM hesperidin significantly decreased fat accumulation in both high-fat worms cultured in nematode growth medium containing 10 mM glucose (83.5 ± 1.2% versus control by Sudan Black B staining and 87.6 ± 2.0% versus control by Oil Red O staining; <i>p</i> < 0.001) and <i>daf-2</i> mutant worms (87.8 ± 1.4% versus control by Oil Red O staining; <i>p</i> < 0.001). Furthermore, 50 μM hesperidin decreased the ratio of oleic acid/stearic acid (C18:1Δ9/C18:0) (<i>p</i> < 0.05), and supplementation of oleic acid could restore the inhibitory effect of hesperidin on fat accumulation. Hesperidin significantly downregulated the expression of stearoyl-CoA desaturase, <i>fat-6</i>, and <i>fat-7</i> (<i>p</i> < 0.05), and mutation of <i>fat-6</i> and <i>fat-7</i> reversed fat accumulation inhibited by hesperidin. In addition, hesperidin decreased the expression of other genes involved in lipid metabolism, including <i>pod-2</i>, <i>mdt-15</i>, <i>acs-2</i>, and <i>kat-1</i> (<i>p</i> < 0.05). These results suggested that hesperidin reduced fat accumulation by affecting several lipid metabolism pathways, such as <i>fat-6</i> and <i>fat-7</i>. This study provided new insights into elucidating the mechanism underlying the regulation of lipid metabolism by hesperidin

Measuring Temperature-Dependent Miscibility for Polymer Solar Cell Blends: An Easily Accessible Optical Method Reveals Complex Behavior

In bulk-heterojunction polymer solar cells (PSC), the molecular-level mixing between conjugated polymer donors and small-molecule acceptors plays a crucial role in obtaining a desirable morphology and good device stability. It has been recently shown that the thermodynamic limit of this mixing can be quantified by the liquidus miscibility, the composition of the small-molecule acceptor in amorphous phases in the presence of small-molecule crystals, and then converted to the Flory–Huggins interaction parameter χ. This conversion maps out the amorphous miscibility. Moreover, the quantitative relations between χ and the fill factor of PSC devices were established recently. However, the commonly used measurement of this liquidus miscibility, scanning transmission X-ray microscopy, is not easily and readily accessible. Here, we delineate a method based on common visible light microscopy and ultraviolet–visible absorption spectroscopy to replace the X-ray measurements. To demonstrate the feasibility of this technique and methodology, a variety of conjugated polymers (PffBT4T-C₉C₁₃, PDPP3T PBDT-TS1, PTB7-Th, and FTAZ) and their miscibility with fullerenes or nonfullerene small molecules (PC₇₁BM, PC₆₁BM, and EH-IDTBR) are characterized. The establishment of this methodology will pave the way to a wider use of the liquidus miscibility and the critical miscibility-function relations to optimize the device performance and obtain good stability in PSCs and other devices

Efficient thick-film polymer solar cells with enhanced fill factors via increased fullerene loading

Developing effective methods to make efficient bulk-heterojunction polymer solar cells at roll-to-roll relevant active layer thickness is of significant importance. We investigate the effect of fullerene content in polymer:fullerene blends on the fill factor (FF) and on the performance of thick-film solar cells for four different donor polymers PTB7-Th, PDPP-TPT, BDT-FBT-2T, and poly[5,5′-bis(2-butyloctyl)-(2,2′-bithiophene)-4,4′-dicarboxylate-alt-5,5′-2,2′-bithiophene] (PDCBT). At a few hundreds of nanometers thickness, increased FFs are observed in all cases and improved overall device performances are obtained except for PDCBT upon increasing fullerene content in blend films. This fullerene content effect was studied in more detail by electrical and morphological characterization. The results suggest enhanced electron mobility and suppressed bimolecular recombination upon increasing fullerene content in thick polymer:fullerene blend films, which are the result of larger fullerene aggregates and improved interconnectivity of the fullerene phases that provide continuous percolating pathways for electron transport in thick films. These findings are important because an effective and straightforward method that enables fabricating efficient thick-film polymer solar cells is desirable for large-scale manufacturing via roll-to-roll processing and for multijunction devices

Efficient thick-film polymer solar cells with enhanced fill factors via increased fullerene loading

\u3cp\u3eDeveloping effective methods to make efficient bulk-heterojunction polymer solar cells at roll-to-roll relevant active layer thickness is of significant importance. We investigate the effect of fullerene content in polymer:fullerene blends on the fill factor (FF) and on the performance of thick-film solar cells for four different donor polymers PTB7-Th, PDPP-TPT, BDT-FBT-2T, and poly[5,5′-bis(2-butyloctyl)-(2,2′-bithiophene)-4,4′-dicarboxylate-alt-5,5′-2,2′-bithiophene] (PDCBT). At a few hundreds of nanometers thickness, increased FFs are observed in all cases and improved overall device performances are obtained except for PDCBT upon increasing fullerene content in blend films. This fullerene content effect was studied in more detail by electrical and morphological characterization. The results suggest enhanced electron mobility and suppressed bimolecular recombination upon increasing fullerene content in thick polymer:fullerene blend films, which are the result of larger fullerene aggregates and improved interconnectivity of the fullerene phases that provide continuous percolating pathways for electron transport in thick films. These findings are important because an effective and straightforward method that enables fabricating efficient thick-film polymer solar cells is desirable for large-scale manufacturing via roll-to-roll processing and for multijunction devices.\u3c/p\u3

Synthesis and Photovoltaic Properties of a Series of Narrow Bandgap Organic Semiconductor Acceptors with Their Absorption Edge Reaching 900 nm

Three <i>n</i>-OS acceptors with <i>E</i>_g values of <1.4 eV were synthesized by introducing double-bond π-bridges into ITIC (ITVIC) and ITIC with monofluorine (ITVfIC) or bifluorine (ITVffIC) substituents on its end groups, and the structure–property relationships of the acceptors were systematically studied. The three <i>n</i>-OS films show broad absorption covering the wavelength range of 550–900 nm with narrow <i>E</i>_g values of 1.40 eV for ITVIC, 1.37 eV for ITVfIC, and 1.35 eV for ITVffIC. Additionally, the fluorine substitution downshifted the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) and lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) energy levels of the compounds. The photovoltaic properties of the <i>n</i>-OS acceptors were investigated by using a medium bandgap conjugated polymer J71 as a donor. The optimized polymer solar cells (PSCs) based on J71:ITVffIC demonstrated a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 10.54% with a high <i>J</i>_sc of 20.60 mA cm^–2 and a <i>V</i>_oc of 0.81 V, and the highest <i>J</i>_sc reached 22.83 mA cm^–2. The high <i>J</i>_sc values of the devices could be attributed to the broad absorption and lower-lying HOMO energy levels of the acceptor. Considering the <i>V</i>_oc of 0.81 V and the narrow bandgap of 1.35 eV for the acceptor ITVffIC, we found the energy loss (<i>E</i>_loss) of the ITVffIC-based PSCs was reduced to 0.54 eV, which is the lowest value in the PSCs with a PCE of >10%. The results indicate that ITVffIC is a promising narrow <i>E</i>_g acceptor for application in tandem and semitransparent PSCs

Unifying charge generation, recombination, and extraction in low-offset non-fullerene acceptor organic solar cells

Even though significant breakthroughs with over 18% power conversion efficiencies (PCEs) in polymer:non-fullerene acceptor (NFA) bulk heterojunction organic solar cells (OSCs) have been achieved, not many studies have focused on acquiring a comprehensive understanding of the underlying mechanisms governing these systems. This is because it can be challenging to delineate device photophysics in polymer:NFA blends comprehensively, and even more complicated to trace the origins of the differences in device photophysics to the subtle differences in energetics and morphology. Here, a systematic study of a series of polymer:NFA blends is conducted to unify and correlate the cumulative effects of i) voltage losses, ii) charge generation efficiencies, iii) non-geminate recombination and extraction dynamics, and iv) nuanced morphological differences with device performances. Most importantly, a deconvolution of the major loss processes in polymer:NFA blends and their connections to the complex BHJ morphology and energetics are established. An extension to advanced morphological techniques, such as solid-state NMR (for atomic level insights on the local ordering and donor:acceptor pi-pi interactions) and resonant soft X-ray scattering (for donor and acceptor interfacial area and domain spacings), provide detailed insights on how efficient charge generation, transport, and extraction processes can outweigh increased voltage losses to yield high PCEs.Department of the Navy, Office of Naval Research AwardOffice of Naval Research [N00014-14-1-0580]; Schlumberger foundation; Alexandervon-Humboldt StiftungAlexander von Humboldt Foundation; DOE Office of Science User FacilityUnited States Department of Energy (DOE) [DE-AC02-05CH11231]; MRSEC Program of the NSF - NSF [DMR-170256]; U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR)Office of Naval Research [N000141712204]; VEGAVedecka grantova agentura MSVVaS SR a SAV (VEGA) [2/0081/18]; Center for Advanced Material Application, SAS; Simons Foundation [601946