Latest ArticlesThe serum cholesterol level is an important indicator of healthy and there is a great necessity for frequent cholesterol monitoring to some cardiovascular-related diseases, which puts forward higher requirements for point-of-care testing (POCT) of cholesterol. In this work, a cascade catalytic system of cholesterol is developed by encapsulation of cholesterol oxidase (ChOx) and PdCuAu nanoparticles into zeolitic imidazolate framework-L (ChOx/PCA@ZIF-L). Results indicate that ZIF-L carrier can significantly increase the catalytic activity of single or multiple enzymes, due to its high loading capacity and efficient molecular transport. Under the optimal conditions, the absorbance of reaction system performs linear relationships with the concentration of cholesterol in two intervals from 0.0005 mmol/L to 1.0000 mmol/L, with a limit of detection of 0.2176 µmol/L. The proposed colorimetric strategy based on ChOx/PCA@ZIF-L performs a good agreement with the results provided by chemiluminescence method for the serum cholesterol detection. Interestingly, a simple paper-based sensing system is constructed through a pre-reaction-transfer operation, which gets rid of the complex pre-processing requirements of traditional operations on filter paper. The presented strategy allows for the sensitive, convenient, costless assay of serum cholesterol, and paves a new way to design the POCT device for daily monitoring of healthy.
Hawanoids A‒E (1‒5), five highly cyclized diterpenoids were isolated from the deep-sea-derived fungus Paraconiothyrium hawaiiense FS482. Compounds 1 and 2 possessed an unprecedented tetracyclo[6.6.2.02,7.011,15]cetane carbon skeleton while 3 and 4 possessed an unusual 11, 14-macrocyclic ether moiety in phomactin family. Their structures including the stereo-chemistry were determined through spectroscopic analysis, X-ray diffractions and computational calculations. The plausible biosynthetic pathway was proposed based on the predicted biosynthetic gene cluster. All of the isolated compounds exhibited inhibitory activities against PAF-induced platelet aggregation. The molecular docking study was carried out understand the interaction between the PAF receptor and hawanoids with different skeletons.
Terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase (TdT) has been characterized as template-independent polymerase using single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) as primers to generate random oligonucleotides. However, the extension performance of TdT to single-stranded RNA (ssRNA) is vague. By systematically comparing and contrasting the performance of TdT-catalyzed ssDNA and ssRNA extension, it is indicated that the catalytic efficiency of ssRNA as primers was about 3 times lower than ssDNA as primers. Collectively, it is believed that understanding the catalytic performance of TdT will help to design the strategy to synthesize chimeric DNA on 3′-OH of ssRNA, which becomes invaluable.
We report the synthesis and characterization of a fan-shaped chiral nanographene 1, which is composed of 6 hexabenzocoronene subunits with 216 conjugated carbon atoms. In the dehydrocyclization reaction, 38 CC bonds are formed simultaneously. 1 exhibits strong panchromatic absorption from the ultraviolet to the near-infrared, with an absorption coefficient of 209,000 L mol−1 cm−1 at 564 nm. Optically pure samples, obtained via chiral HPLC, show distinct ECD signals (|Δε| = 704 L mol−1 cm−1 at 405 nm). Upon excitation, 1 emits near-infrared fluorescence at 820 nm with a quantum yield of 5.5%. These photophysical properties of 1 were analyzed with the assistance of DFT calculations.
In order to realize the sulfur and water resistance and facilitate the CO oxidation reactions, the effects of strain on the adsorption of CO, O2, SO2 and H2O molecules on Ni single-atom-catalyst supported by single-carbon-vacancy graphene (Ni-SG) have been studied based on first principles calculations. It shows that the compressive strain increases the adsorption energies of all above mentioned molecules on Ni-SG, where SO2 is adsorbed more strongly on Ni-SG than CO. However, in the presence of tensile strain, the adsorption energies decreases significantly when the molecules (O2 and SO2) obtain electrons from Ni-SG, while the adsorption energies just slightly decrease when the molecules (CO and H2O) lose electrons to Ni-SG, which finally achieves the preferential adsorption of CO and O2 molecules on Ni-SG by tensile strain. In addition, with tensile strain increasing to 10%, the rate-limited energy barrier along Eley-Rideal (ER) path monotonically increases from 0.77 eV to 0.98 eV, while the rate-limited energy barrier along Langmuir-Hinshelwood (LH) path monotonically decreases from 0.54 eV to 0.44 eV, indicating that the tensile strain can facilitate the LH mechanism while imped the ER mechanism on Ni-SG. The Hirshfeld charge and orbital levels of O2 and CO molecules are modulated by the tensile strain, which plays an important role for the decreasing of energy barriers for CO oxidation. Overall, the tensile strain can enhance the sulfur and water resistance of Ni-SG, as well as boost the CO oxidation reactions.
It is essential to develop efficient electrocatalysts to generate hydrogen from water electrolysis for hydrogen economy. In this work, platinum (Pt) and nickel (Ni) co-doped porous carbon nanofibers (Pt/Ni-PCNFs) with low Pt content were prepared via an electrospinning, carbonization and galvanic replacement reaction. Because of the high electrical conductivity, abundant electrochemical active sites and synergistic effect between Pt and Ni nanoparticles, the optimized Pt/Ni-PCNFs catalyst shows an excellent HER activity with overpotentials of 20 mV in 0.5 mol/L H2SO4 and 46 mV in 1 mol/L KOH at a current density of 10 mA/cm2. Furthermore, over 35-h long-term stability has been achieved without significant attenuation. This work provides a simple route to prepare highly efficient electrocatalysts for water splitting and has great prospects in the field of renewable energy.
Intracellular pH undertakes critical functions in various biological and pathological processes. It is important to monitor intracellular pH fluctuations for understanding physiological and pathological processes. Here, one aldehyde-bearing cyclometalated iridium(Ⅲ) complex ([(4-pba)2Ir(dcphen)]PF6, 4-pba = 4-(2-pyridyl) benzaldehyde, dcphen = 4, 7-dichloro-1, 10-phenanthroline, probe 1) was synthesized and used to track intracellular pH fluctuations. Probe 1 displayed pH-dependent luminescence property in pH range of 1.81–6.81 with an evaluated pKa value of 4.30 in BR buffer-DMSO (v:v = 99:1). An intramolecular hydrogen bonds assisted pH-responsive mechanism was proposed for the pH-responsive behavior of probe 1. Probe 1 was successfully applied for imaging and tracking pH fluctuations in HeLa cells under external stimulation with fast response time, good photostability as well as low cytotoxicity and high cell permeability. This work demonstrates that aldehyde-bearing cyclometalated iridium(Ⅲ) complex can be used as alternative pH-responsive probe for real-time tracking intracellular pH fluctuations, which provides a strategy for the design of pH-responsive probe in versatile applications.
The development of carbon materials with high electrochemical performance for next-generation energy device is emerging, especially N, S co-doped carbon materials have sparked intensive attention. However, the exploration of N, S co-doped carbon with well-defined active sites and hierarchical porous structures are still limited. In this study, we prepared a series of edge-enriched N, S co-doped carbon materials through pyrolysis of thiourea (TU) encapsulated in zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (TU@ZIF) composites, which delivered very good oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) performance in alkaline medium with onset potential of 0.94 V vs. reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE), good stability and methanol tolerance. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations suggested that carbon atoms adjacent to N and S are probable active sites for ORR intermediates in edge-enriched N, S co-doped carbon materials because higher electron density can enhance O2 adsorption, lower formation barriers of intermediates, improving the ORR performance comparing to intact N, S co-doped carbon materials. This study might provide a new pathway for improving ORR activity by the integration engineering of edge sites, and electronic structure of heteroatom doped carbon electrocatalysts.
Realizing efficient charge separation and directional transfer is a challenge for single-component semiconductors. The spatial electric field generated by dipole moment could promote charge separation. Here, three-dimensional hierarchical CuCo2S4 microspheres with lattice distortion were prepared, and lattice distortion was modulated by changing feed Co/Cu molar ratios in synthesis. CuCo2S4 showed asymmetric crystal structure, leading to generation of dipole moment. The charge separation efficiency of CuCo2S4 was related to lattice distortion, and lattice expansion was in favor for charge separation. The CuCo2S4 with feed Cu/Co molar ratio of 1:4 (CCS-4) showed the maximum lattice expansion and exhibited the highest photocatalytic activity, which was attributable to the highest charge separation efficiency and the largest specific surface area. CCS-4 can remove 95.4% of tetracycline hydrochloride within 40 min photocatalysis, and effectively improve the biodegradability of pharmaceutical wastewater. Importantly, this study provides a new vision for constructing single-component photocatalysts with high photocatalytic performance.
Previous studies demonstrated that three-dimensional (3D) multicellular tumor spheroids (MCTS) could more closely mimic solid tumors than two-dimensional (2D) cancer cells in terms of the spatial structure, extracellular matrix-cell interaction, and gene expression pattern. However, no study has been reported on the differences in lipid metabolism and distribution among 2D cancer cells, MCTS, and solid tumors. Here, we used HepG2 liver cancer cell lines to establish these three cancer models. The variations of lipid profiles and spatial distribution among them were explored by using mass spectrometry-based lipidomics and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry imaging (MSI). The results revealed that MCTS, relative to 2D cells, had more shared lipid species with solid tumors. Furthermore, MCTS contained more comparable characteristics than 2D cells to solid tumors with respect to the relative abundance of most lipid classes and mass spectra patterns. MSI data showed that 46 of 71 lipids had similar spatial distribution between solid tumors and MCTS, while lipids in 2D cells had no specific spatial distribution. Interestingly, most of detected lipid species in sphingolipids and glycerolipids preferred locating in the necrotic region to the proliferative region of solid tumors and MCTS. Taken together, our study provides the evidence of lipid metabolism and distribution demonstrating that MCTS are a more suitable in vitro model to mimic solid tumors, which may offer insights into tumor metabolism and microenvironment.
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