Latest ArticlesAromatic compounds such as phenols presented widely in coal chemical industry wastewater (CCW) render the treatment facing great challenge due to their biorefractory characteristics and potential risks to the environment and human health. Ozone-based advanced oxidation processes show promising for these pollutants removal, but the mineralization via ozonation alone is unsatisfactory and not cost-effective. Herein, a hybrid peroxi-coagulation/ozonation process (denoted as PCO) was developed using sacrificial iron plate as an anode and carbon black modified carbon felt as cathode in the presence of ozonation. An enhanced phenol removal of ~100% within 20 min and phenol mineralization of ~80% within 60 min were achieved with a low energy consumption of 0.35 kWh/g TOC. In this novel process, synergistic effect between ozonation and peroxi-coagulation was observed, and beside O3 direct oxidation, peroxone played a dominant role for phenol removal. In the PCO process, the hydrolyzed Fe species enhanced the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), while •OH was dominantly responsible for pollutant degradation. This process also illustrated high resistance to high ionic strength and better performance for TOC removal in real wastewater when compared with ozonation and peroxi-coagulation process. Therefore, this process is more cost-effective, being very promising for CCW treatment.
Peptide-drug conjugates (PDCs) composed of peptide, spacer and drug have gained extensive attention in the field of drug delivery owing to its precise control over the drug payload and architecture. However, the achievement of controllable and rapid drug release at targeted site by PDCs is still a great challenge for pharmaceutist. Herein, we introduced the histidine residue into PDCs to generate a supramolecular hydrogel via a pH-trigger strategy, which exhibited an autocatalytic effect to precisely tune drug release from PDCs hydrogel. Using indomethacin (Idm) as model drug, various PDCs (Y(Idm)EEH, Y(Idm)EEK and Y(Idm)EER) were synthesized and their self-assembling properties were investigated in terms of critical aggregation concentration (CAC), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and rheometer. Introduction of histidine residue into PDCs presented a robust catalytic activity on the ester hydrolysis of p-nitrophenyl acetate in aqueous solution, as well conferred the autocatalytic capacity to hydrolyze the PDCs into active parent drug (Idm). Overall, we reported an autocatalytic activity of histidine residue to precisely tune drug release from PDCs hydrogels.
Parkinson's disease (PD) is a complex neurological disorder that typically worsens with age. A wide range of pathologies makes PD a very heterogeneous condition, and there are currently no reliable diagnostic tests for this disease. The application of metabolomics to the study of PD has the potential to identify disease biomarkers through the systematic evaluation of metabolites. In this study, urine metabolic profiles of 215 urine samples from 104 PD patients and 111 healthy individuals were assessed based on liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. The urine metabolic profile was first evaluated with partial least-squares discriminant analysis, and then we integrated the metabolomic data with ensemble machine learning techniques using the voting strategy to achieve better predictive performance. A combination of 8-metabolite predictive panel performed well with an accuracy of over 90.7%. Compared to control subjects, PD patients had higher levels of 3-methoxytyramine, N-acetyl-l-tyrosine, orotic acid, uric acid, vanillic acid, and xanthine, and lower levels of 3, 3-dimethylglutaric acid and imidazolelactic acid in their urine. The multi-metabolite prediction model developed in this study can serve as an initial point for future clinical studies.
Finding improved therapeutic protocols against non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) remains an unmet clinical demand. Phototherapy is a promising alternative treatment for traditional clinical therapeutic methods, but the limited tissue penetration blocks the therapeutics. Inspired by the excellent physical and chemical properties of black phosphorus nanosheets (BPNSs), a fluorescence and thermal imaging guided photo-/sono-synergistic treatment platform BPNSs@PEG-SS-IR780/RGD is developed. This ingenious multifunctional theranostic platform not only exhibits outstanding photothermal conversion efficiency and highly efficient reactive oxygen species generation, but also has good biocompatibility, tumor-targeting and tumor microenvironment responsiveness. In addition, BPNSs@PEG-SS-IR780/RGD could actively target the tumor sites and generate excellent photothermal, photodynamic and sonodynamic therapeutic efficacy. Both in vitro and in vivo experiments indicate that BPNSs@PEG-SS-IR780/RGD can be a promising nanomaterial for NHL imaging and therapy. Taken together, this study not only expands the application field of black phosphorus materials, but also provides a possibility to design a new generation of NHL treatment regimens with clinical application potential.
Uncontrolled microglial activation is decisively involved in the neuroinflammatory pathogenesis of brain diseases. Consequently, suppression of microglial overactivation appears to be a strategy for the prevention of nerve injury. In this paper, a novel vanadium complex, vanadyl N-(p-N,N-dimethylaminophenylcarbamoylmethyl)iminodiacetate (VO(p-dmada)), was synthesized from vanadyl sulfate and N,N-dimethyl-p-phenylenediamine, which was structurally characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectrum and ESI-MS analysis. The effect of VO(p-dmada) on neuroinflammation was investigated by using the models of lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced BV2 microglial cells and BALB/c mice. Our data demonstrated that VO(p-dmada) significantly suppressed microglial activation by downregulating inflammatory mediators and associated proteins, and inactivating nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) signaling pathway. VO(p-dmada) also upregulated peroxisome proliferator activated receptor gamma (PPARγ) by reducing transglutaminase 2 and heat shock protein 60 expression. Co-treatment with PPARγ antagonist GW9662 significantly impeded the inhibitory effect of VO(p-dmada) on LPS-induced neuroinflammation. These cumulative findings demonstrated that VO(p-dmada) is a potential new drug for the treatment of neuroinflammation-related neurodegenerative diseases.
The appearance and spread of antibiotic-resistant pathogens known as antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the major worldwide health crises that humanity have to deal with over the next decades. One of the main methods for addressing AMR is the effective screening for antimicrobial insensitivity in clinical and environmental monitoring. Current clinical laboratory procedures use traditional culture-based antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST) methods, which can take up to 24h to identify which drug is suitable for the infection inhibition. Therefore, it is vital to develop novel strategies that offer quick, simple, affordable, reliable, sensitive and accurate AMR monitoring. Sensors for AMR markers detection could possess the essential qualities for quickly identifying resistant microorganisms and could give vital data for the selection of antibacterial drugs administration. This review offers a summary of the innovative application of these AMR markers detection strategies focusing on healthcare and environmental surveillance for the AMR genotypic or phenotypic assessment.
Carbon dots (CDs), a new building unit, have been revolutionizing the fields of biomedicine, bioimaging, and optoelectronics with their excellent physical, chemical, and biological properties. However, the difficulty of preparing excitation-dependent full-spectrum fluorescent CDs has seriously hindered their further research in fluorescence emission mechanisms and biomedicine. Here, we report full-spectrum fluorescent CDs that exhibit controlled emission changes from purple (380 nm) to red (613 nm) at room temperature by changing the excitation wavelength, and the excitation dependence was closely related to the regulation of sp2 and sp3 hybrid carbon structures by β-cyclodextrin-related groups. In addition, by regulating the content of β-cyclodextrin, the optimal quantum yields of full-spectrum fluorescent CDs were 8.97%, 8.35%, 7.90%, 9.69% and 17.4% at the excitation wavelengths of 340, 350, 390, 410 and 540 nm, respectively. Due to their excellent biocompatibility and color tunability, full-spectrum fluorescent CDs emitted bright and steady purple, blue, green, yellow, and red fluorescence in MCF-7 cells. Moreover, we optimized the imaging conditions of CDs and mitochondrial-specific dyes; and realized the mitochondrial-targeted co-localization imaging of purple, blue and green fluorescence. After that, we also explored the effect of full-spectrum fluorescent CDs in vivo fluorescence imaging through the intratumorally, subcutaneously, and caudal vein, and found that full-spectrum fluorescent CDs had good fluorescence imaging ability in vivo.
It is established that monitoring blood glucose on a daily basis is one of the most effective solutions to prevent and treat diabetes. Consequently, developing a glucose sensing platform with outstanding sensing performance occupies an indispensable position for the early diagnosis and risk assessment of diabetes. Recently, biosensor has been deemed as a promising apparatus to acquire the signals for glucose monitoring based on 2D materials. However, it is unsatisfied to deploy some materials widely as a result of some inherent defects. Carbon nanotubes have comparatively high toxicity. MoS2 with unfavourable biocompatibility are still arduously implemented on being functionalized. Fortunately, MXene, a brand-new and rapidly developing two-dimensional material, exhibits marvellous application potential in the domain of biosensing. Therefore, it has exerted tremendous attention from diverse scientific fields owning to its remarkable properties, such as excellent hydrophilicity, metal-like conductivity, abundant surface functional groups, unique layered structure, large specific surface area and remarkable biocompatibility. This review mainly focuses on the main synthetic route of MXenes, as well as the recent advancements of biosensors involving MXenes as an electrode modifier for glucose detection. In addition, the promising prospects and challenges of glucose sensing technology based on MXenes are also discussed.
Inosine is a vital RNA modification across three kingdoms of life. It has been demonstrated that inosine plays important roles in modulation of the fate of RNAs. In the current study, we developed a highly sensitive method to determine inosine in a single cell by N-cyclohexyl-N'-β-(4-methylmorpholinium)ethylcarbodiimide p-toluenesulfonate (CMCT) derivatization in combination with mass spectrometry analysis. The results showed that the detection sensitivity of inosine was increased by 556-fold after CMCT derivatization, with the limit of detection (LOD) being 4.5 amol. With the established method, we could detect inosine from 13.0 pg of total RNA of HEK293T cells. Meanwhile, inosine in RNA from a single cell could also be clearly detected due to the improved detection sensitivity. Moreover, we found the level of inosine in RNA of sleep-deprived mice was significantly increased compared to the control mice, indicating that inosine is associated with sleep behavior and might be a potential indicator of sleep disorder. Taken together, the chemical derivatization coupled with mass spectrometry analysis offers a valuable tool in determination of endogenous RNA modifications in a single cell, which should benefit the functional study of RNA modification in rare clinical samples.
As one of the 2D transition metal sulfides, 1T phase MoS2 nanosheets (NSs) have been studied because of their distinguished conductivity and suitable electronic structure. Nevertheless, the active sites are limited to a small number of edge sites only, while the basal plane is catalytically inert. Herein, we report that boron (B) doped 1T phase MoS2 NSs can replace precious metals as a co-catalyst to assist in photocatalytic H2 production of 2D layered g-C3N4 nanosheets (g-C3N4 NSs). The H2 evolution rate of prepared B-MoS2@g-C3N4 composites with 15 wt% B-MoS2 (B-MoS2@g-C3N4–15, 1612.75 µmol h−1 g−1) is 52.33 times of pure g-C3N4 NSs (30.82 µmol h−1 g−1). Furthermore, the apparent quantum efficiency (AQE) of B-MoS2@g-C3N4–15 composites under the light at λ = 370 nm is calculated and reaches 5.54%. The excellent photocatalytic performance of B-MoS2@g-C3N4–15 composites is attributed to the B ions doping inducing the distortion of 1T phase MoS2 crystal, which can activate more base planes to offer more active sites for H2 evolution reaction (HER). This work of B-MoS2@g-C3N4 composites offers experience in the progress of effective and low-price photocatalysts for HER.
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