A biolaser utilizes biological materials as part of its gain medium and/or part of its cavity. It can also be a micro‐ or nanosized laser embedded/integrated within biological materials. The biolaser ...employs lasing emission rather than regular fluorescence as the sensing signal and therefore has a number of unique advantages that can be explored for broad applications in biosensing, labeling, tracking, contrast agent development, and bioimaging. This article reports on the progress in biolasers with focus on the work done in the past five years. In the end, the possible future directions of the biolaser are discussed.
Biolasers and their applications in biology and biomedicine are reviewed in this progress report. The biolaser employs lasing emission rather than regular fluorescence as the sensing signal and therefore has a number of unique advantages that can be explored for broad applications in biosensing, labeling, tracking, contrast agent development, and bioimaging.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Multicellular spheroids and organoids are promising in vitro 3D models in personalized medicine and drug screening. They replicate the structural and functional characteristics of human organs in ...vivo. Microfluidic technology and micro‐nano fabrication can fulfill the high requirement of the engineering approach in the growing research interest in spheroids and organoids. In this review, spheroids and organoids are comparatively introduced. Then it is illustrated how spheroids‐ and organoids‐on‐a‐chip technology facilitates their establishment, expansion, and application through spatial‐temporal control, mechanical cues modeling, high‐throughput analysis, co‐culture, multi‐tissue interactions, biosensing, and bioimaging integration. The potential opportunities and challenges in developing spheroids‐ and organoids‐on‐a‐chip technology are finally outlooked.
Multicellular spheroids and organoids are promising in vitro models in personalized medicine and drug screening. This review summarizes state of the art in spheroid‐ and organoid‐on‐a‐chip technology, including the advances in spatial and temporal control, mechanical cue modeling, high‐throughput analysis, co‐culture and multi‐tissue interactions, biosensing, and bioimaging integration. It also presents relative perspectives and future research directions.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Liquid crystals (LCs), as a promising branch of highly-sensitive, quick-response, and low-cost materials, are widely applied to the detection of weak external stimuli and have attracted significant ...attention. Over the past decade, many research groups have been devoted to developing LC-based biosensors due to their self-assembly potential and functional diversity. In this paper, recent investigations on the design and application of LC-based biosensors are reviewed, based on the phenomenon that the orientation of LCs can be directly influenced by the interactions between biomolecules and LC molecules. The sensing principle of LC-based biosensors, as well as their signal detection by probing interfacial interactions, is described to convert, amplify, and quantify the information from targets into optical and electrical parameters. Furthermore, commonly-used LC biosensing targets are introduced, including glucose, proteins, enzymes, nucleic acids, cells, microorganisms, ions, and other micromolecules that are critical to human health. Due to their self-assembly potential, chemical diversity, and high sensitivity, it has been reported that tunable stimuli-responsive LC biosensors show bright perspectives and high superiorities in biological applications. Finally, challenges and future prospects are discussed for the fabrication and application of LC biosensors to both enhance their performance and to realize their promise in the biosensing industry.
Recent investigations on the design and application of liquid crystal-based biosensors have been reviewed, according to the phenomenon that orientations of liquid crystals can be directly influenced by interactions between biomolecules and liquid crystal molecules. With the ability to detect external stimuli with high sensitivity, liquid crystal biosensors can help realize a new biosensing era.
Deep learning for digital pathology is hindered by the extremely high spatial resolution of whole-slide images (WSIs). Most studies have employed patch-based methods, which often require detailed ...annotation of image patches. This typically involves laborious free-hand contouring on WSIs. To alleviate the burden of such contouring and obtain benefits from scaling up training with numerous WSIs, we develop a method for training neural networks on entire WSIs using only slide-level diagnoses. Our method leverages the unified memory mechanism to overcome the memory constraint of compute accelerators. Experiments conducted on a data set of 9662 lung cancer WSIs reveal that the proposed method achieves areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.9594 and 0.9414 for adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma classification on the testing set, respectively. Furthermore, the method demonstrates higher classification performance than multiple-instance learning as well as strong localization results for small lesions through class activation mapping.
Microscale laser emissions have emerged as a promising approach for information encoding and anti‐counterfeiting for their feature‐rich spectra and high sensitivity to the surrounding environment. ...Compared with artificial materials, natural responsive biomaterials enable a higher level of complexity and versatile ways for tailoring optical responses. However, precise control of lasing wavelengths and spatial locations with biomolecules remains a huge challenge. Here, a biologically programmable laser, in which the lasing can be manipulated by biomolecular activities at the nanoscale, is developed. Tunable lasing wavelengths are achieved by exploiting the swelling properties of enzyme‐responsive hydrogel droplets in a Fabry–Pérot microcavity. Both experimental and theoretical means demonstrate that inner 3D network structures and external curvature of the hydrogel droplets lead to different lasing thresholds and resonance wavelengths. Finally, inkjet‐printed multiwavelength laser encoding and anti‐counterfeiting are showcased under different scalabilities and environments. Hyperspectral laser images are utilized as an advanced feature for a higher level of security. The biologically encoded laser will provide a new insight into the development of biosynthetic and bioprogrammable laser devices, offering new opportunities for secure communication and smart sensing.
Inspired by the natural responsivity of active biomaterials, laser information encoding is demonstrated by exploiting enzyme‐bioactive hydrogel materials confined in a microcavity. Tunable lasing wavelengths are achieved by manipulating the biological activity and nanostructures in hydrogel droplets. This study represents the first development of a biologically controlled laser for optical information applications.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Early identification of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and Kirsten rat sarcoma viral oncogene homolog (KRAS) mutations is crucial for selecting a therapeutic strategy for patients with ...non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). We proposed a machine learning-based model for feature selection and prediction of EGFR and KRAS mutations in patients with NSCLC by including the least number of the most semantic radiomics features. We included a cohort of 161 patients from 211 patients with NSCLC from The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA) and analyzed 161 low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) images for detecting EGFR and KRAS mutations. A total of 851 radiomics features, which were classified into 9 categories, were obtained through manual segmentation and radiomics feature extraction from LDCT. We evaluated our models using a validation set consisting of 18 patients derived from the same TCIA dataset. The results showed that the genetic algorithm plus XGBoost classifier exhibited the most favorable performance, with an accuracy of 0.836 and 0.86 for detecting EGFR and KRAS mutations, respectively. We demonstrated that a noninvasive machine learning-based model including the least number of the most semantic radiomics signatures could robustly predict EGFR and KRAS mutations in patients with NSCLC.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Dephosphorylation that removes a phosphate group from substrates is an important reaction for living organisms and environmental protection. Although CeO2 has been shown to catalyze this reaction, ...cerium is low in natural abundance and has a narrow global distribution (>90 % of these reserves are located within six countries). It is thus imperative to find another element/material with high worldwide abundance that can also efficiently extract the phosphate out of agricultural waste for phosphorus recycle. Using para‐nitrophenyl phosphate (p‐NPP) as a model compound, we demonstrate that TiO2 with a F‐modified (001) surface can activate p‐NPP dephosphorylation at temperatures as low as 40 °C. By probe‐assisted nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), it was revealed that the strong electron‐withdrawing effect of fluorine makes Ti atoms (the active sites) on the (001) surface very acidic. The bidentate adsorption of p‐NPP on this surface further promotes its subsequent activation with a barrier ≈20 kJ mol−1 lower than that of the pristine (001) and (101) surfaces, allowing the activation of this reaction near room temperature (from >80 °C).
We demonstrate for the first time that TiO2 with a F‐modified (001) surface can activate p‐NPP dephosphorylation near room temperature. The electron‐withdrawing effect of fluorine imposed on the TiO2(001) surface strongly manipulates the electronic state of surrounding Ti5C atoms by making them very acidic, facilitating not only the bidentate adsorption of p‐NPP but also its subsequent activation.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Growing evidence points out that the capacity of organisms to acclimate or adapt to new habitat conditions basically depends on their phenomic plasticity attributes, of which their gut commensal ...microbiota might be an essential impact factor. Especially in aquatic organisms, which are in direct and continual contact with the aquatic environment, the complex and dynamic microbiota have significant effects on health and development. However, an understanding of the relative contribution of internal sorting (host genetic) and colonization (environmental) processes is still unclear. To understand how microbial communities differ in response to rapid environmental change, we surveyed and studied the environmental and gut microbiota of native and habitat-exchanged shrimp (Macrobrachium nipponense) using 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing on the Illumina MiSeq platform. Corresponding with microbial diversity of their living water areas, the divergence in gut microbes of lake-to-river shrimp (CK) increased, while that of river-to-lake shrimp (KC) decreased. Importantly, among the candidate environment specific gut microbes in habitat-exchanged shrimp, over half of reads were associated with the indigenous bacteria in native shrimp gut, yet more candidates presented in CK may reflect the complexity of new environment. Our results suggest that shrimp gut microbiota has high plasticity when its host faces environmental changes, even over short timescales. Further, the changes in external environment might influence the gut microbiome not just by providing environment-associated microbes directly, but also by interfering with the composition of indigenous gut bacteria indirectly.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Background
Novel interventions are needed to improve lifestyle and prevent noncommunicable diseases, the leading cause of death and disability globally. This study aimed to systematically review, ...synthesize, and grade scientific evidence on effectiveness of novel information and communication technology to reduce noncommunicable disease risk.
Methods and Results
We systematically searched PubMed for studies evaluating the effect of Internet, mobile phone, personal sensors, or stand‐alone computer software on diet, physical activity, adiposity, tobacco, or alcohol use. We included all interventional and prospective observational studies conducted among generally healthy adults published between January 1990 and November 2013. American Heart Association criteria were used to evaluate and grade the strength of evidence. From 8654 s, 224 relevant reports were identified. Internet and mobile interventions were most common. Internet interventions improved diet (N=20 studies) (Class IIa A), physical activity (N=33), adiposity (N=35), tobacco (N=22), and excess alcohol (N=47) (Class I A each). Mobile interventions improved physical activity (N=6) and adiposity (N=3) (Class I A each). Evidence limitations included relatively brief durations (generally <6 months, nearly always <1 year), heterogeneity in intervention content and intensity, and limited representation from middle/low‐income countries.
Conclusions
Internet and mobile interventions improve important lifestyle behaviors up to 1 year. This systematic review supports the need for long‐term interventions to evaluate sustainability.
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