Palladium diselenide (PdSe2), a thus far scarcely studied group‐10 transition metal dichalcogenide has exhibited promising potential in future optoelectronic and electronic devices due to unique ...structures and electrical properties. Here, the controllable synthesis of wafer‐scale and homogeneous 2D PdSe2 film is reported by a simple selenization approach. By choosing different thickness of precursor Pd layer, 2D PdSe2 with thickness of 1.2–20 nm can be readily synthesized. Interestingly, with the increase in thickness, obvious redshift in wavenumber is revealed by Raman spectroscopy. Moreover, in accordance with density functional theory (DFT) calculation, optical absorption and ultraviolet photoemission spectroscopy (UPS) analyses confirm that the PdSe2 exhibits an evolution from a semiconductor (monolayer) to semimetal (bulk). Further combination of the PdSe2 layer with Si leads to a highly sensitive, fast, and broadband photodetector with a high responsivity (300.2 mA W−1) and specific detectivity (≈1013 Jones). By decorating the device with black phosphorus quantum dots, the device performance can be further optimized. These results suggest the as‐selenized PdSe2 is a promising material for optoelectronic application.
This study reports on the wafer‐area synthesis of a high‐quality 2D palladium diselenide (PdSe2) layer through a simple selenization method. Both experimental analysis and theoretical simulation reveal that the PdSe2 film exhibits a gradual transition from a semiconductor (monolayer) to semimetal (bulk). Further combination of PdSe2 with Si leads to a fast and sensitive broadband photodiode, with a high responsivity and specific detectivity.
Abstract
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs (typically consisting of 18–25 nucleotides) that negatively control expression of target genes at the post-transcriptional level. Owing to the ...biological significance of miRNAs, miRTarBase was developed to provide comprehensive information on experimentally validated miRNA–target interactions (MTIs). To date, the database has accumulated >13,404 validated MTIs from 11,021 articles from manual curations. In this update, a text-mining system was incorporated to enhance the recognition of MTI-related articles by adopting a scoring system. In addition, a variety of biological databases were integrated to provide information on the regulatory network of miRNAs and its expression in blood. Not only targets of miRNAs but also regulators of miRNAs are provided to users for investigating the up- and downstream regulations of miRNAs. Moreover, the number of MTIs with high-throughput experimental evidence increased remarkably (validated by CLIP-seq technology). In conclusion, these improvements promote the miRTarBase as one of the most comprehensively annotated and experimentally validated miRNA–target interaction databases. The updated version of miRTarBase is now available at http://miRTarBase.cuhk.edu.cn/.
The systematic design of functional peptides has technological and therapeutic applications. However, there is a need for pattern-based search engines that help locate desired functional motifs in ...primary sequences regardless of their evolutionary conservation. Existing databases such as The Protein Secondary Structure database (PSS) no longer serves the community, while the Dictionary of Protein Secondary Structure (DSSP) annotates the secondary structures when tertiary structures of proteins are provided. Here, we extract 1.7 million helices from the PDB and compile them into a database (Therapeutic Peptide Design database; TP-DB) that allows queries of compounded patterns to facilitate the identification of sequence motifs of helical structures. We show how TP-DB helps us identify a known purification-tag-specific antibody that can be repurposed into a diagnostic kit for Helicobacter pylori. We also show how the database can be used to design a new antimicrobial peptide that shows better Candida albicans clearance and lower hemolysis than its template homologs. Finally, we demonstrate how TP-DB can suggest point mutations in helical peptide blockers to prevent a targeted tumorigenic protein-protein interaction. TP-DB is made available at http://dyn.life.nthu.edu.tw/design/ .
Converting solar energy into valuable hydrogen and hydrocarbon fuels through photocatalytic water splitting and CO
2
photo-reduction is highly promising in addressing the growing demand for renewable ...and clean energy resources. Developing efficient photocatalysts for solar-driven H
2
production and CO
2
reduction is the most essential part in achieving this goal. For the purpose of attaining high photocatalytic efficiency, hetero-nanostructures formed by multiple material components have been demonstrated as an effective strategy. Within this heterostructure, its interface is a critical consideration, whereby it determines the principle of charge transfer across the heterojunctions and consequent surface reactions. This article reviews the recent developments of hetero-nanostructures for photocatalytic H
2
production and CO
2
reduction based on material compositions that form heterojunctions.
The recent developments of hetero-nanostructures for photocatalytic H
2
production and CO
2
reduction are reviewed in detail, based on material compositions that form heterojunctions.
We introduce SDM-NET, a deep generative neural network which produces
structured deformable meshes.
Specifically, the network is trained to generate a spatial arrangement of closed, deformable mesh ...parts, which respects the global part structure of a shape collection, e.g., chairs, airplanes, etc. Our key observation is that while the overall structure of a 3D shape can be complex, the shape can usually be decomposed into a set of parts, each homeomorphic to a box, and the finer-scale geometry of the part can be recovered by
deforming
the box. The architecture of SDM-NET is that of a
two-level variational autoencoder
(VAE). At the part level, a PartVAE learns a deformable model of part geometries. At the structural level, we train a Structured Parts VAE (SP-VAE), which
jointly
learns the part structure of a shape collection and the part geometries, ensuring the coherence between global shape structure and surface details. Through extensive experiments and comparisons with the state-of-the-art deep generative models of shapes, we demonstrate the superiority of SDM-NET in generating meshes with visual quality, flexible topology, and meaningful structures, benefiting shape interpolation and other subsequent modeling tasks.
The impairment of the ovarian response in in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycles after salpingectomy remains contentious. Therefore, we investigated whether a history of salpingectomy affects the number ...of oocytes retrieved in women undergoing IVF in comparison with the number in women without underlying tubal disease.
Case-control study (Canadian Task Force Classification II-2).
A tertiary hospital-affiliated fertility center.
Fifty-four women aged <35 years with a history of salpingectomy and 59 age-matched women without tubal disease.
Gonadotropin-releasing hormone antagonist protocol for controlled ovarian stimulation and transvaginal oocyte retrieval.
The antral follicle count (AFC), anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) levels, and the number of retrieved oocytes were significantly lower in women with prior salpingectomy than in women without tubal disease. Day-3 follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) levels, total gonadotropin dosage, and stimulation days did not significantly differ between the groups. The indications of salpingectomy (i.e., hydrosalpinx and ectopic pregnancy) did not differ significantly in terms of ovarian response or reserve among women with salpingectomy history. A history of salpingectomy and other factors related to ovarian response in IVF, such as age, AMH, AFC, day-3 FSH, and total gonadotropin dose, were significantly correlated with the number of oocytes retrieved by univariate regression analysis. In the multivariate-adjusted model after controlling all the above-mentioned variables, only AFC and AMH levels continued to exhibit significant associations with the number of retrieved oocytes. In a subgroup analysis, the negative impact of prior salpingectomy on the number of retrieved oocytes was especially significant in women with suboptimal ovarian reserves (defined as AMH < 4 ng/mL), regardless of the indication of salpingectomy or whether salpingectomy was bilateral or unilateral.
A negative effect on the number of retrieved oocytes in the subsequent IVF cycle after salpingectomy is more likely in women aged <35 years with suboptimal ovarian reserve. Nevertheless, postsurgical AMH and AFC levels still possess a more direct predictive value on ovarian response than the history of salpingectomy.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Collagen is an important material for biomedical research, but using mammalian tissue-derived collagen carries the risk of zoonotic disease transmission. Marine organisms, such as farmed tilapia, ...have emerged as a safe alternative source of collagen for biomedical research. However, the tilapia collagen products for biomedical research are rare, and their biological functions remain largely unexamined. In this study, we characterized a commercial tilapia skin collagen using SDS-PAGE and fibril formation assays and evaluated its effects on skin fibroblast adhesion, proliferation, and migration, comparing it with commercial collagen from rat tails, porcine skin, and bovine skin. The results showed that tilapia skin collagen is a type I collagen, similar to rat tail collagen, and has a faster fibril formation rate and better-promoting effects on cell migration than porcine and bovine skin collagen. We also confirmed its application in a 3D culture for kidney cells' spherical cyst formation, fibroblast-induced gel contraction, and tumor spheroid interfacial invasion. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the freeze-dried tilapia skin collagen scaffold improved wound closure in a mouse excisional wound model, similar to commercial porcine or bovine collagen wound dressings. In conclusion, tilapia skin collagen is an ideal biomaterial for biomedical research.
Carbon dioxide (CO
2
) is a nontoxic and inexpensive C1 building block, which can be used for the synthesis of valuable chemicals such as aromatic carbamates from anilines and methanol (MeOH), ...glycerol carbonate from glycerol, and cyclic carbonates from diols. However, these reactions generate water as the byproduct and suffer from thermodynamic limits, which lead to low yields. Calcium carbide (CaC
2
) is a renewable chemical, which can be recycled from calcium that is abundant in the Earth's crust. Furthermore, CaC
2
rapidly reacts with water. In this work, we used CaC
2
as a dehydrating agent for the direct synthesis of carbamates (including polyurethane precursors) from amines, CO
2
, and MeOH. All reagents were commercially available. In addition, CaC
2
was employed for the synthesis of glycerol carbonate from glycerol and CO
2
with a zinc catalyst and N-donor ligand. A similar protocol was applied to synthesize cyclic carbonates from diols and CO
2
.
Calcium carbide was used as a sustainable dehydrating agent for the synthesis of carbamates, glycerol carbonate, and cyclic carbonates directly from CO
2
.
The exonuclease activity of Apurinic/apyrimidinic endonuclease 1 (APE1) is responsible for processing matched/mismatched terminus in various DNA repair pathways and for removing nucleoside analogs ...associated with drug resistance. To fill in the gap of structural basis for exonucleolytic cleavage, we determine the APE1-dsDNA complex structures displaying end-binding. As an exonuclease, APE1 does not show base preference but can distinguish dsDNAs with different structural features. Integration with assaying enzyme activity and binding affinity for a variety of substrates reveals for the first time that both endonucleolytic and exonucleolytic cleavage can be understood by an induced space-filling model. Binding dsDNA induces RM (Arg176 and Met269) bridge that defines a long and narrow product pocket for exquisite machinery of substrate selection. Our study paves the way to comprehend end-processing of dsDNA in the cell and the drug resistance relating to APE1.
Leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) is involved in lipid metabolism; however, the role of LRRK2 in lipid metabolism to affect non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is still unclear. In the mouse ...model of NAFLD induced by a high-fat diet, we observed that LRRK2 was decreased in livers. In HepG2 cells, exposure to palmitic acid (PA) down-regulated LRRK2. Overexpression and knockdown of LRRK2 in HepG2 cells were performed to further investigate the roles of LRRK2 in lipid metabolism. Our results showed that β-oxidation in HepG2 cells was promoted by LRRK2 overexpression, whereas LRRK2 knockdown inhibited β-oxidation. The critical enzyme of β-oxidation, carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1A (CPT1A), was positively regulated by LRRK2. Our data suggested that the regulation of CPT1A by LRRK2 may be via the activation of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor α (PPARα). The overexpression of LRRK2 reduced the concentration of a pro-inflammatory cytokine, tumor necrosis factor α (TNFα), induced by PA. The increase in β-oxidation may promote lipid catabolism to suppress inflammation induced by PA. These results indicated that LRRK2 participated in the regulation of β-oxidation and suggested that the decreased LRRK2 may promote inflammation by suppressing β-oxidation in the liver.
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