357 research outputs found
Detection of extremely low concentration waterborne pathogen using a multiplexing self-referencing SERS microfluidic biosensor
Citation: Wang, C., Madiyar, F., Yu, C. X., & Li, J. (2017). Detection of extremely low concentration waterborne pathogen using a multiplexing self-referencing SERS microfluidic biosensor. Journal of Biological Engineering, 11, 11. doi:10.1186/s13036-017-0051-xBackground: It is challenging to achieve ultrasensitive and selective detection of waterborne pathogens at extremely low levels (i.e., single cell/mL) using conventional methods. Even with molecular methods such as ELISA or PCR, multi-enrichment steps are needed which are labor and cost intensive. In this study, we incorporated nano-dielectrophoretic microfluidic device with Surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) technique to build a novel portable biosensor for easy detection and characterization of Escherichia coli O157:H7 at high sensitivity level (single cell/mL). Results: A multiplexing dual recognition SERS scheme was developed to achieve one-step target detection without the need to separate target-bound probes from unbound ones. With three different SERS-tagged molecular probes targeting different epitopes of the same pathogen being deployed simultaneously, detection of pathogen targets was achieved at single cell level with sub-species specificity that has not been reported before in single-step pathogen detection. Conclusion: The self-referencing protocol implements with a Nano-dielectrophoretic microfluidic device potentially can become an easy-to-use, field-deployable spectroscopic sensor for onsite detection of pathogenic microorganisms
Rapid-Response and Highly Sensitive Noncross-Linking Colorimetric Nitrite Sensor Using 4-Aminothiophenol Modified Gold Nanorods
A novel colorimetric nitrite ion sensor was developed utilizing 4-aminothiophenol (4-ATP) modified gold nanorods (GNR). In the presence of nitrite ions, the deamination reaction was induced by heating the 4-ATP modified GNR in ethanol solution, resulting in the reduction of the GNR surface charges, which led to aggregation of GNRs and a colorimetric response that was quantitatively correlated to the concentration of nitrite ions. This simple assay was rapid (≤10 min) and highly sensitive (\u3c1 ppm of nitrite), and it can be used for rapid monitoring of drinking water quality
Low Frequency Quasi-periodic Oscillation in MAXI J1820+070: Revealing distinct Compton and Reflection Contributions
X-ray low frequency quasi-periodic oscillations (LFQPOs) of black hole X-ray
binaries, especially those type-C LFQPOs, are representative timing signals of
black hole low/hard state and intermediate state, which has been suspected as
to originate due to Lense-Thirring precession of the accretion flow. Here we
report an analysis of one of the \emph{Insight}-HXMT observations of the black
hole transient MAXI J1820070 taken near the flux peak of its hard spectral
state during which strong type-C LFQPOs were detected in all three instruments
up to photon energies above 150 keV. We obtained and analyzed the
short-timescale X-ray spectra corresponding to high- and low-intensity phases
of the observed LFQPO waveform with a spectral model composed of Comptonization
and disk reflection components. We found that the normalization of the spectral
model is the primary parameter that varied between the low and high-intensity
phases. The variation in the LFQPO flux at the hard X-ray band (> 100 keV) is
from the Compton component alone, while the energy-dependent variation in the
LFQPO flux at lower energies (< 30 keV) is mainly caused by the reflection
component with a large reflection fraction in response to the incident Compton
component. The observed X-ray LFQPOs thus should be understood as manifesting
the original timing signals or beats in the hard Compton component, which gives
rise to additional variability in softer energies due to disk reflection.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
Antioxidant and anti-dyslipidemic effects of polysaccharidic extract from sea cucumber processing liquor
Sea cucumber is a seafood of high nutritional value. During its processing, sea cucumber processing liquor is routinely produced, which is usually discarded as waste. The chemical composition of this processing liquor is similar to sea cucumbers themselves. Hence, valuable ingredients, such as functional polysaccharides, could be obtained from them. Results Biologically active polysaccharides from sea cucumber processing liquor were extracted through protease hydrolysis and electroosmosis. The analysis revealed that the polysaccharide extract from sea cucumber processing liquor (PESCPL) is predominantly composed of mannose, in addition to some glucose and fucose. The antioxidant activity of PESCPL was analyzed using in vitro. It was demonstrated that PESCPL could effectively scavenge 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl radicals, hydroxyl radicals, and superoxide anion radicals. The effect of PESCPL was investigated in vivo by using mice model fed with high-fat diets with/without PESCPL supplement. It was shown that PESCPL could increase the catalase and superoxide dismutase activity in the serum and decrease serum malonaldehyde content. Furthermore, mice fed with PESCPL diet showed a considerable decrease in the serum cholesterol and triglyceride levels and an increase in high-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels. Conclusions Our research highlights that PESCPL is a natural antioxidant and could be utilized as a therapeutic supplement for dyslipidemia
Transport of Artificial Virus-like Nanocarriers (AVN) through intestinal monolayer via Microfold cells
Compared with subcutaneous or intramuscular routes for vaccination, vaccine delivery via gastrointestinal mucosa has tremendous potential as it is easy to administer and pain free. Robust immune responses can be triggered successfully once vaccine carried antigen reaches the mucosal associated lymphoid sites (e.g., Peyer’s patches). However, the absence of an efficient delivery method has always been an issue for successful oral vaccine development. In our study, inspired by mammalian orthoreovirus (MRV) transport into gut mucosal lymphoid tissue via Microfold cells (M cells), artificial virus-like nanocarriers (AVN), consisting of gold nanocages functionalized with the 1 protein from mammalian reovirus (MRV), were tested as an effective oral vaccine delivery vehicle targeting M cells. AVN was shown to have a significantly higher transport compared to other experimental groups across mouse organoid monolayers containing M cells. These findings suggest that AVN has the potential to be an M cell-specific oral vaccine/drug delivery vehicle
Textural and biochemical changes of scallop Patinopecten yessoensis adductor muscle during low-temperature long-time (LTLT) processing
In this study, the effects of low-temperature long-time (LTLT) processing on the quality of Patinopecten yessoensis adductor muscle (PYAM) were investigated at 55°C. The texture of processed PYAM was characterized by textural profile analysis (TPA), and significant increases of cook loss, hardness, and shear force with time during LTLT processing were observed. The degradation of structural proteins was analyzed by sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE), and fragments with molecular weights of 208 kDa (myosin heavy chain, MHC), 97 kDa (paramyosin) and 35–40 kDa, respectively, were among the main products. Chemical characterization revealed elevated levels of activity in cathepsin L and caspase-3 and oxidation of proteins and lipids. Electron spin resonance spin trapping indicated reactive oxygen species (ROS) production in the PYAM during LTLT processing. Based on these results, it is proposed that the sequence of events in PYAM during LTLT processing includes ROS→ endogenous enzyme (involving caspase-3 and cathepsin L) activation →protein degradation→quality changes (texture and color). This revelation helps to further our understanding of the LTLT processing of PYAM, which would lead to better quality control for PYAM products
Zinc-Chelating Mechanism of Sea Cucumber (Stichopus japonicus)-Derived Synthetic Peptides
In this study, three synthetic zinc-chelating peptides (ZCPs) derived from sea cucumber hydrolysates with limited or none of the common metal-chelating amino-acid residues were analyzed by flame atomic absorption spectroscopy, circular dichroism spectroscopy, size exclusion chromatography, zeta-potential, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. The amount of zinc bound to the ZCPs reached maximum values with ZCP:zinc at 1:1, and it was not further increased by additional zinc presence. The secondary structures of ZCPs were slightly altered, whereas no formation of multimers was observed. Furthermore, zinc increased the zeta-potential value by neutralizing the negatively charged residues. Only free carboxyl in C-terminus of ZCPs was identified as the primary binding site of zinc. These results provide the theoretical foundation to understand the mechanism of zinc chelation by peptides
Learning Meta Model for Zero- and Few-shot Face Anti-spoofing
Face anti-spoofing is crucial to the security of face recognition systems.
Most previous methods formulate face anti-spoofing as a supervised learning
problem to detect various predefined presentation attacks, which need large
scale training data to cover as many attacks as possible. However, the trained
model is easy to overfit several common attacks and is still vulnerable to
unseen attacks. To overcome this challenge, the detector should: 1) learn
discriminative features that can generalize to unseen spoofing types from
predefined presentation attacks; 2) quickly adapt to new spoofing types by
learning from both the predefined attacks and a few examples of the new
spoofing types. Therefore, we define face anti-spoofing as a zero- and few-shot
learning problem. In this paper, we propose a novel Adaptive Inner-update Meta
Face Anti-Spoofing (AIM-FAS) method to tackle this problem through
meta-learning. Specifically, AIM-FAS trains a meta-learner focusing on the task
of detecting unseen spoofing types by learning from predefined living and
spoofing faces and a few examples of new attacks. To assess the proposed
approach, we propose several benchmarks for zero- and few-shot FAS. Experiments
show its superior performances on the presented benchmarks to existing methods
in existing zero-shot FAS protocols.Comment: Accepted by AAAI202
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