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•Irradiation pretreatment could reduce particle size and low shear rate of feedstock.•251g/L of high sugars content could be achieved from irradiated biomass.•30–40%(w/v) of ...irradiated biomass loadings was employed for the hydrolysis process.•235g/L glucose content could be obtained in cellulose enzymatic hydrolysate.•High sugars concentration from lignocellulose opens up a door to biorefinery.
This study evaluated the two hydrolysis strategies, involving one thermal and one dilute acid/enzymatic hydrolysis, to produce high xylose and glucose concentrations from lignocellulose assisted with irradiation pretreatment. Prior to hydrolysis, lignocellulose was pretreated by γ-irradiation at 800KGy. The merits of irradiation pretreatment on lignocellulose were contributed to size-reduced particle distributions and low shear rate of material, which allowed high biomass loadings up to 30–40%(w/v, equals to 23–29wt.%) for the consequent hydrolysis process. Results showed that hemicellulose fraction could achieve ∼84g/L of total sugars containing ∼55g/L xylose and ∼21g/L glucose through this two steps hydrolysis. Cellulose fraction would release ∼251g/L of total sugars consisting of ∼235g/L glucose and ∼16g/L xylose in the ultimate enzymatic hydrolysate. To the best of our knowledge, it was the first report of achieving 235g/L glucose in cellulose enzymatic hydrolysate derived from lignocellulose.
Herein, nanosized fumed silica (FS) with poor electrical conductivity is used as an "electron inhibitor" between Li metal and garnet solid electrolyte (SE) to prevent lithium dendrite growth. The FS ...demonstrated its effectiveness in preventing the fast lithium dendrite propagation during the long-term lithium stripping and plating processes, leading to an enhanced battery performance. We believe this study could help shed light on such electron inhibitors in constructing all-solid-state batteries (ASSBs) with superior cycling performance.
To improve the visual quality and embedding rate of existing reversible image watermarking algorithms, a reversible image watermarking algorithm based on quadratic difference expansion is proposed. ...First, the pixel points with grayscale values 0 and 255 in the original image are removed, and then, the half-scrambled watermark information is embedded into the original image using linear difference expansion. Finally, the remaining half of the watermark information is embedded into the previously generated watermarked image by the quadratic difference expansion, meanwhile the removed pixel points with grayscale values 0 and 255 in the image are merged, and the final watermarked image is generated accordingly. The experimental results show that the algorithm has both a high embedding rate and a high visual quality, which can completely recover the original image. Compared with other difference expansion watermarking algorithms, it has certain advantages without having to consider the smoothness of the embedded image region.
Veratrilla baillonii Franch is an important Chinese medicinal herb for treating liver-related diseases, which has been over-collected in the recent decades. However, the effective conservation and ...related population genetic study has been hindered because of the lack of genome sequences and genetic markers in the natural population. We have conducted RNA-seq on V. baillonii. We performed de novo assembly of these data to characterize the V. baillonii transcriptome, resulting in 133,019 contigs with size >200 bp. These contigs were annotated using the NCBI nonredundant database and Gene Ontology (GO) terms. From these contigs, we developed novel microsatellite simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers, identifying a total of 40,885 SSRs. SSRs with repeat motifs of 1-4 bp (mono-, di-, tri-, and tetranucleotides) accounted for 99.8% of all SSRs, with mononucleotide repeats most common, followed by dinucleotide (16.2%) and trinucleotide repeats (14.7%). We selected 151 SSRs for experimental validation, of which 74 were confirmed by polymerase chain reaction. Fourteen SSRs were determined to be polymorphic by screening 40 individuals from six distant populations. The number of alleles per locus ranged from two to four, and the expected heterozygosity varied from 0.2637 to 0.8571, suggesting that these SSR markers are highly polymorphic and effective for further genetic analysis in the nature population. In addition, we explored the genetic structure of V. baillonii using five SSRs in four geographic populations and found that the identified genotypes were clustered into two phylogenetic clades: the Mekong River clade and Jinsha River clade. This result indicates that these two regions may harbor highly divergent genetic lineages and enriched genetic diversity. The de novo transcriptome sequences and new SSR markers discovered by this study provide an initial step for understanding the population genetics of V. baillonii, and a valuable resource for effective conservation management. KEYWORDS: transcriptome, Illumina RNA-Seq, microsatellite (SSR) markers, Veratrilla baillonii
Virus like particles (VLPs) have been well recognized as one of the most important vaccine platforms due to their structural similarity to natural viruses to induce effective humoral and cellular ...immune responses. Nevertheless, lack of viral nucleic acids in VLPs usually leads the vaccine candidates less efficient in provoking innate immune against viral infection. Here, we constructed a biomimetic dual antigen hybrid influenza nanovaccines THM-HA@Mn with robust immunogenicity via in situ synthesizing a stimulator of interferon genes (STING) agonist Mn3O4 inside the cavity of a recombinant Hepatitis B core antigen VLP (HBc VLP) having fused SpyTag and influenza M2e antigen peptides (Tag-HBc-M2e, THM for short), followed by conjugating a recombinant hemagglutinin (rHA) antigen on the surface of the nanoparticles through SpyTag/SpyCatcher ligating. Such inside Mn3O4 immunostimulator-outside rHA antigen design, together with the chimeric M2e antigen on the HBc skeleton, enabled the synthesized hybrid nanovaccines THM-HA@Mn to well imitate the spatial distribution of M2e/HA antigens and immunostimulant in natural influenza virus. In vitro cellular experiments indicated that compared with the THM-HA antigen without Mn3O4 and a mixture vaccine consisting of THM-HA + MnOx, the THM-HA@Mn hybrid nanovaccines showed the highest efficacies in dendritic cells uptake and in promoting BMDC maturation, as well as inducing expression of TNF-α and type I interferon IFN-β. The THM-HA@Mn also displayed the most sustained antigen release at the injection site, the highest efficacies in promoting the DC maturation in lymph nodes and germinal center B cells activation in the spleen of the immunized mice. The co-delivery of immunostimulant and antigens enabled the THM-HA@Mn nanovaccines to induce the highest systemic antigen-specific antibody responses and cellular immunogenicity in mice. Together with the excellent colloid dispersion stability, low cytotoxicity, as well as good biosafety, the synthetic hybrid nanovaccines presented in this study offers a promising strategy to design VLP-based vaccine with robust natural and adaptive immunogenicity against emerging viral pathogens.
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•Mn nanoadjuvant was in situ bio-mineralized inside recombination HBc VLP.•THM-HA@Mn hybrid influenza nanovaccine was fabricated with HA and M2e as antigens.•The nanovaccines inmate the spatial distribution of antigens and adjuvant in natural influenza virus.•Hybrid nanovaccines promote the maturation of DC both in vitro and in vivo.•Hybrid nanovaccines induce robust antibodies and T cell immunity against influenza.
Gene duplication has been proposed to serve as the engine of evolutionary innovation. It is well recognized that eukaryotic genomes contain a large number of duplicated genes that evolve new ...functions or expression patterns. However, in mollusks, the evolutionary mechanisms underlying the divergence and the functional maintenance of duplicate genes remain little understood. In the present study, we performed a comprehensive analysis of duplicate genes in the protein kinase superfamily using whole genome and transcriptome data for the Pacific oyster. A total of 64 duplicated gene pairs were identified based on a phylogenetic approach and the reciprocal best BLAST method. By analyzing gene expression from RNA-seq data from 69 different developmental and stimuli-induced conditions (nine tissues, 38 developmental stages, eight dry treatments, seven heat treatments, and seven salty treatments), we found that expression patterns were significantly correlated for a number of duplicate gene pairs, suggesting the conservation of regulatory mechanisms following divergence. Our analysis also identified a subset of duplicate gene pairs with very high expression divergence, indicating that these gene pairs may have been subjected to transcriptional subfunctionalization or neofunctionalization after the initial duplication events. Further analysis revealed a significant correlation between expression and sequence divergence (as revealed by synonymous or nonsynonymous substitution rates) under certain conditions. Taken together, these results provide evidence for duplicate gene sequence and expression divergence in the Pacific oyster, accompanying its adaptation to harsh environments. Our results provide new insights into the evolution of duplicate genes and their expression levels in the Pacific oyster.
Kernel method is an effective method to solve the non-linear model analysis and also a research focus in the current pattern recognition community. The selection of kernel functions plays an ...important role in the performance of kernel methods. The Support Vector Regression (SVR) had provided higher performance than traditional learning machines and had been widely applied in real-world regression problems and nonlinear function estimation problems. In view of the regression performance, SVR is affected largely by the selected kernel function. A model of SVR based on the Bessel kernel function of the first kind were put forward and given the implementations with Rand LibSVM. Eight data sets in the database of UCI and 4 common kernel functions were selected for the experiment, the Mean Square Error and determination coefficient R2 were used as the performance evaluation index. The experimental results show that Bessel kernel function of first kind has higher prediction accuracy and stronger generalization ability in SVR, which provides references for the kernel functions selection of SVR.
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This paper aimed to prepare a Mabuterol (MAB) patch for treating asthma by ion-pair strategy to overcome the drug's thermal instability and elucidate the molecular mechanisms of the ...stabilization effect. The formulation factor, including counter-ion and pressure-sensitive adhesive (PSA), was optimized by the stability and in vitro skin permeation studies. The molecular mechanism of ion-pair stability was characterized using TGA, Raman, FT-IR, NMR, XPS, and molecular modeling. The optimized patch comprised MAB-Lactic acid (MAB-LA) and hydroxyl adhesive (AAOH) as the matrix, with Q = 126.47 ± 9.75 μg/cm2 and Fabs = 75.27%. The increased TGA (213.11 °C), disproportionation energy (ΔG = 97.44 KJ), and ion-pair lifetime (Tlife = 2.21 × 103) indicated that the counter-ion improved MAB stability through strong ionic and hydrogen bonds with LA. The remaining drug content in the MAB-LA patch was 15% higher than that of the pure MAB patch after storage for 12 months at room temperature, which was visualized by Raman imaging. The interaction between MAB-LA and AAOH PSA via hydrogen bond decreased the diffusion rate and increased the drug stability further. This study successfully developed the MAB patch, which provided a reference for applying ion-pairing strategies to improve the stability of transdermal patches.
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