Graphene oxide (GO) membranes have been attracting numerous attention due to their impressive performance in various applications, especially in water purification. However, because the swelling in ...water and polar organic solvents causes the increase of interlayer channels, GO membranes usually possess inferior rejection for subnanometer-sized molecules. How to control the transport channels of GO membranes at angstrom level is a significantly scientific and practical issue. Herein, a concept of external pressure regulation (EPR) is reported for restraining GO swelling and controlling its interlayer spacing precisely. Since anisotropic GO films only swell at vertical direction, the interlayer channels can be manipulated by externally unidirectional reverse force. Based on this concept, an EPR system with GO membranes is designed for water desalination by adjusting the external pressure that has high resolution. In cross-flow filtration, the compressed GO membranes show high KCl, NaCl, and CaCl2 rejections of 94%, 97%, and 98%, respectively, accompanied by large water permeance up to 25 L m–2 h–1 under low feed pressure of 2 bar, despite the fact that the semi-free spatial swelling of ultrathin GO layer above the substrate pores can deteriorate salt rejection. Our work provides a straightforward physical strategy to adjust the interlayer spacing of the membranes fabricated by two-dimensional nanosheets for achieving desired filtration capacity.
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IJS, KILJ, NUK, PNG, UL, UM
Genome editing is the modification of genomic DNA at a specific target site in a wide variety of cell types and organisms, including insertion, deletion and replacement of DNA, resulting in ...inactivation of target genes, acquisition of novel genetic traits and correction of pathogenic gene mutations. Due to the advantages of simple design, low cost, high efficiency, good repeatability and short-cycle, CRISPR-Cas systems have become the most widely used genome editing technology in molecular biology laboratories all around the world. In this review, an overview of the CRISPR-Cas systems will be introduced, including the innovations, the applications in human disease research and gene therapy, as well as the challenges and opportunities that will be faced in the practical application of CRISPR-Cas systems.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Tissue penetration depth is a major challenge in practical photodynamic therapy (PDT). A biocompatible and highly effective near infrared (NIR)-light-absorbing carbazole-substituted BODIPY (Car-BDP) ...molecule is reported as a class of imaging-guidable deep-tissue activatable photosensitizers for PDT. Car-BDP possesses an intense, broad NIR absorption band (600–800 nm) with a remarkably high singlet oxygen quantum yield (ΦΔ = 67%). After being encapsulated with biodegradable PLA–PEG-FA polymers, Car-BDP can form uniform and small organic nanoparticles that are water-soluble and tumor-targetable. Rather than using laser light, such nanoparticles offer an unprecedented deep-tissue, tumor targeting photodynamic therapeutic effect by using an exceptionally low-power-density and cost-effective lamp light (12 mW cm–2). In addition, these nanoparticles can be simultaneously traced in vivo due to their excellent NIR fluorescence. This study signals a major step forward in photodynamic therapy by developing a new class of NIR-absorbing biocompatible organic nanoparticles for effective targeting and treatment of deep-tissue tumors. This work also provides a potential new platform for precise tumor-targeting theranostics and novel opportunities for future affordable clinical cancer treatment.
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IJS, KILJ, NUK, PNG, UL, UM
Ultrathin, molecular sieving membranes composed of microporous materials offer great potential to realize high permeances and selectivities in separation applications, but strategies for their ...production have remained a challenge. Here we show a route for the scalable production of nanometre-thick metal-organic framework (MOF) molecular sieving membranes, specifically via gel-vapour deposition, which combines sol-gel coating with vapour deposition for solvent-/modification-free and precursor-/time-saving synthesis. The uniform MOF membranes thus prepared have controllable thicknesses, down to ~17 nm, and show one to three orders of magnitude higher gas permeances than those of conventional membranes, up to 215.4 × 10
mol m
s
Pa
for H
, and H
/C
H
, CO
/C
H
and C
H
/C
H
selectivities of as high as 3,400, 1,030 and 70, respectively. We further demonstrate the in situ scale-up processing of a MOF membrane module (30 polymeric hollow fibres with membrane area of 340 cm
) without deterioration in selectivity.MOF-based membranes have shown great promise in separation applications, but producing thin membranes that allow for high fluxes remains challenging. Here, the authors use a gel-vapour deposition strategy to fabricate composite membranes with less than 20 nm thicknesses and high gas permeances and selectivities.
Cytidine base editors (CBEs) and adenine base editors (ABEs), composed of a cytidine deaminase or an evolved adenine deaminase fused to Cas9 nickase, enable the conversion of C·G to T·A or A·T to G·C ...base pair in organisms, respectively. Here, we show that BE3 and ABE7.10 systems can achieve a targeted mutation efficiency of 53-88% and 44-100%, respectively, in both blastocysts and Founder (F0) rabbits. Meanwhile, this strategy can be used to precisely mimic human pathologies by efficiently inducing nonsense or missense mutations as well as RNA mis-splicing in rabbit. In addition, the reduced frequencies of indels with higher product purity are also determined in rabbit blastocysts by BE4-Gam, which is an updated version of the BE3 system. Collectively, this work provides a simple and efficient method for targeted point mutations and generation of disease models in rabbit.
Persistent luminescence nanoparticles （PLNPs） and upconversion nanoparticles （UCNPs） are two special optical imaging nanoprobes. In this study, efficient upconverted persistent luminescence （UCPL） is ...realized by combining their unique features into polymethyl methacrylate, forming a film composed of both PLNPs and UCNPs. The red persistent luminescence （-640 nm） of the PLNPs （CaS：Eu,Tm, Ce） can be activated by upconverted green emission of UCNPs （-NaYF4：Yb, Er@NaYF4） excited by near-infrared light （NIR）. Using this strategy, both the unique optical properties of PLNPs and UCNPs can be optimally synergized, thus generating efficient upconversion, photoluminescence, and UCPL simultaneously. The UCPL system has potential applications in in vivo bioimaging by simply monitoring the biocompatible low power density of NIR-light-excited persistent luminescence. Due to its simplicity, we anticipate that this method for the preparation of UCPL composite can be easily adjusted using other available upconversion and persistent phosphor pairs for a number of biophotonic and photonic applications.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OBVAL, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
In this study, we report a novel air–water interfacial self‐crystallization (AWISC) method for scalable depositing continuous metal–organic framework (MOF) layers on modification‐free polyvinylidene ...fluoride (PVDF) hollow fibers. Through importing MOF precursors into porous hollow fiber substrates with outer diameters of 1.2 mm and evaporating aqueous solutions under mild conditions, the metal ions and linkers close to solution surface can be concentrated firstly, thus the crystallization of MOFs will preferentially occur at interface of air and liquid precursors. The formed crystals can block off the pores of substrates to form defect‐free MOF membranes. The prepared ZIF‐8 membranes exhibit superior performance in molecular separation, with high rejections of 94.1 ∼ 99.5% for small molecules (molecular weight: 320 ∼ 800 Da) and large permeance up to 50 L m−2 h−1 bar−1. Moreover, by combining AWISC and microfluidic processing, the high‐performance ZIF‐8 hollow fiber membranes with long length of 30 cm can be easily fabricated in scalability.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Metal–organic framework (MOF) membranes possess superior separation performance, but their inferior processability is an intrinsic drawback. Herein, we report a scalable and versatile sol–gel ...transformation strategy to synthesize MOF membranes by two steps of precursor-coating for gel dispersion and thermal-treatment for membrane growth, similar to the processing of polymeric membranes. The asynchronous crystallization between the bottom and the top of gels found here is critical for the formation of defect-free MOF membranes. The prepared ZIF-8 membranes with a ligand/zinc ratio of 4 show impressive performance in hydrogen purification and hydrocarbon separation, with H 2 /CH 4 , H 2 /C 3 H 8 and C 3 H 6 /C 3 H 8 selectivities of up to 30, 9000 and 200, respectively. Moreover, sol–gel transformation can deposit MOF layers with controllable thickness, down to 130 nm, on both discs and hollow fibers without deterioration in performance in a solvent-/precursor-saving manner.
CRISPR/Cas9 has been widely used in generating site-specific genetically modified animal models. Myostatin (MSTN) is a negative regulator of muscle mass, related to muscle growth and differentiation. ...The knockout of MSTN with the desired phenotype of double muscle has been successfully generated in mice, goats, pigs and cattle, but not in rabbits. In this study, the MSTN knockout (KO) rabbits were generated by co-injection of Cas9 mRNA and sgRNA into zygotes. The typical phenotype of double muscle with hyperplasia or hypertrophy of muscle fiber was observed in MSTN KO rabbits. Furthermore, a similar phenotype was found in the F1 generation, suggesting that the mutation of MSTN could be stably inherited in the MSTN KO rabbits. In summary, we have successfully generated MSTN KO rabbits using CRISPR/Cas9 system with high efficiency, which is a reliable and effective animal model for the study of muscle development and related diseases.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
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