Electrolyte as the most flammable component of lithium ion battery is always considered to be closely related to its safety. Great efforts are made to optimize electrolyte since it is the ultimate ...means to improve the lithium ion battery safety. This article reviews the thermal risk of commercial electrolytes and the development of safer electrolytes. The main reason for the thermal instability of the traditional nonaqueous electrolyte is the thermal decomposition of lithium hexafluorophosphate (LiPF6) and highly flammable solvents. Substitution technique of the lithium salt is under developing and the electrolyte flame retardant additives are widely studied. Novel addition technologies like electrospinning and microcapsules are introduced to reduce the restrictions on physical properties of flame retardants and improve electrochemical performances. Overcharge protection additives are simply summarized according to their reaction mechanism. For the breakthrough of new generations of safer electrolytes, nonflammable solvents with new salts and solid state electrolytes are reviewed as well as their existing problems at present. This shall serve as a summary for the development of electrolytes and a reference for the design of next generation of safer electrolytes.
Lithium ion battery safety is widely concerned and using more stable electrolytes is an effective way to solve the safety problems. Efforts to design safer electrolytes is provided including stable lithium salts, electrolyte additives, nonflammable solvents and solid state electrolytes. These methods and technologies are becoming mature and advanced providing the possibility for future applications of high-safety lithium ion batteries. Display omitted
•The safety problems of lithium ion battery related to electrolytes are reviewed.•Various means to improve the safety of electrolytes are summarized.•The essentials and further directions of next generation electrolytes are pointed out.
Profiling of body fluids is crucial for monitoring and discovering metabolic markers of health and disease and for providing insights into human physiology. Since human urine and plasma each contain ...an extreme diversity of metabolites, a single liquid chromatographic system when coupled to mass spectrometry (MS) is not sufficient to achieve reasonable metabolome coverage. Hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography (HILIC) offers complementary information to reverse-phase liquid chromatography (RPLC) by retaining polar metabolites. With the objective of finding the optimal combined chromatographic solution to profile urine and plasma, we systematically investigated the performance of five HILIC columns with different chemistries operated at three different pH (acidic, neutral, basic) and five C18-silica RPLC columns. The zwitterionic column ZIC-HILIC operated at neutral pH provided optimal performance on a large set of hydrophilic metabolites. The RPLC columns Hypersil GOLD and Zorbax SB aq were proven to be best suited for the metabolic profiling of urine and plasma, respectively. Importantly, the optimized HILIC-MS method showed excellent intrabatch peak area reproducibility (CV < 12%) and good long-term interbatch (40 days) peak area reproducibility (CV < 22%) that were similar to those of RPLC-MS procedures. Finally, combining the optimal HILIC- and RPLC-MS approaches greatly expanded metabolome coverage with 44% and 108% new metabolic features detected compared with RPLC-MS alone for urine and plasma, respectively. The proposed combined LC-MS approaches improve the comprehensiveness of global metabolic profiling of body fluids and thus are valuable for monitoring and discovering metabolic changes associated with health and disease in clinical research studies.
The study aims to report a rare case of a novel homozygous variant in the LRBA gene, originating from uniparental disomy of paternal origin. This case contributes new clinical data to the LRBA gene ...variant database.
The study details the case of a 2-year-old child diagnosed in May 2023 at our center with a homozygous LRBA gene variant. Detailed clinical data of the patient were collected, including whole-exome sequencing of peripheral blood mononuclear cells, with parental genetic verification.
The child presented with recurrent respiratory infections and chronic neutropenia, progressing to pancytopenia. Imaging showed splenomegaly and enlarged lymph nodes in the axillary and abdominal regions. Peripheral blood lymphocyte count revealed reduced B cells and NK cells. Elevated cytokine levels of IFN-α and IFN-r were observed. Whole-exome sequencing revealed a nonsense homozygous variant in the LRBA gene, specifically c.2584C>T (p.Gln862Ter). The father exhibited a heterozygous variant at this locus, while no variant was found in the mother. Sample analysis indicated characteristics of uniparental disomy. According to the guidelines of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG), this variant is preliminarily classified as "Likely pathogenic". Currently, there are no reports in academic literature regarding this specific variant site.
LRBA gene variants can lead to a rare inborn error of immunity disease. The c.2584C>T (p.Gln862Ter) variant in exon 22 of the LRBA gene is a newly identified pathogenic variant, and the homozygous variant caused by uniparental disomy is exceedingly rare. This case represents the second global report of an LRBA gene function loss due to uniparental disomy abnormalities.
Gene expression differs among individuals and populations and is thought to be a major determinant of phenotypic variation. Although variation and genetic loci responsible for RNA expression levels ...have been analysed extensively in human populations, our knowledge is limited regarding the differences in human protein abundance and the genetic basis for this difference. Variation in messenger RNA expression is not a perfect surrogate for protein expression because the latter is influenced by an array of post-transcriptional regulatory mechanisms, and, empirically, the correlation between protein and mRNA levels is generally modest. Here we used isobaric tag-based quantitative mass spectrometry to determine relative protein levels of 5,953 genes in lymphoblastoid cell lines from 95 diverse individuals genotyped in the HapMap Project. We found that protein levels are heritable molecular phenotypes that exhibit considerable variation between individuals, populations and sexes. Levels of specific sets of proteins involved in the same biological process covary among individuals, indicating that these processes are tightly regulated at the protein level. We identified cis-pQTLs (protein quantitative trait loci), including variants not detected by previous transcriptome studies. This study demonstrates the feasibility of high-throughput human proteome quantification that, when integrated with DNA variation and transcriptome information, adds a new dimension to the characterization of gene expression regulation.
Soil salinization is one of the current global environmental problems. Current research on crops in saline-alkali land focuses on salt tolerance, but less on its ecological benefits. However, plants ...and the environment can interact and influence each other, which is the theory used to carry out Nature-based Solutions (NbS). Therefore, the research on crop plants with both ecological and economic benefits is novel and valuable work. Then three widely planted cash crops (Solanum melongena, Momordica charantia, Capsicum annuum) were selected for salt stress treatment (NaCl, 150mmol/L), some physiological indicators (chlorophyll, soluble protein, Proline (Pro), malondialdehyde (MDA)) of plant and the soil properties (electrical conductivity, pH, the soil salt content) were measured. The results showed that the salinity content of the three plant cultivation soils was significantly different (P<0.05) after the salt stress; all three crops had some desalination capacity, but Capsicum annuum had the strongest salt resistance and desalination capacity.
Bone defect and osteoporosis are common in clinic which are seriously harmful for public health. Bionic bone tissue engineering scaffolds are very important for bone tissue repair and reconstruction. ...In this study, different bionic bone tissue engineering scaffolds were constructed by computer-aided design and fabricated by selected laser melting. Novel porous structures were designed by using parameterization modeling. The accurate models with key characteristics such as porosity and the mechanical property of scaffolds were studied. Compared with the designed model, the error of the selective laser melting (SLM) printed scaffold porosity was less than 2.73%. The mechanical properties of the prepared scaffold can be calculated by finite element analysis of 3D models, and the mechanical properties of the 3D printed samples were consistent with the model design. Through the design, manufacture, characterization and evaluation of the scaffold porous structures, the parametric modeling of porous titanium bone tissue engineering scaffold with good mechanical and biological properties was realized. Optimized design and precisely manufactured implants are very important for bone tissue repair and reconstruction.
CircRNAs are a novel class of RNA molecules with a unique closed continuous loop structure. CircRNAs are abundant in eukaryotic cells, have unique stability and tissue specificity, and can play a ...biological regulatory role at various levels, such as transcriptional and posttranscriptional levels. Numerous studies have indicated that circRNAs serve a crucial purpose in cancer biology. CircRNAs regulate tumor behavioral phenotypes such as proliferation and migration through various molecular mechanisms, such as miRNA sponging, transcriptional regulation, and protein interaction. Recently, several reports have demonstrated that they are also deeply involved in resistance to anticancer drugs, from traditional chemotherapeutic drugs to targeted and immunotherapeutic drugs. This review is the first to summarize the latest research on circRNAs in anticancer drug resistance based on drug classification and to discuss their potential clinical applications.
Autophagy is an important process of cellular degradation and has been proven to contribute to tumorigenesis. High-mobility group box 1 (HMGB1) is an abundant nonhistone protein that has been widely ...reported to play a central role in the induction of autophagy. In nucleus, HMGB1 upregulates the expression of HSP27 to induce autophagy. In cytoplasm, the Beclin-1/PI3K-III complex can be activated by HMGB1 to promote autophagy. Extracellular HMGB1 binds to the receptor for advanced glycation end products to induce autophagy. Recent studies have shown that HMGB1-induced autophagy exerts multiple functions in various cancers like proliferation. Moreover, inhibition of HMGB1-induced autophagy can reverse chemoresistance, which is regulated by noncoding RNAs such as microRNAs and lncRNAs. Here, we provide a brief introduction to HMGB1 and HMGB1-induced autophagy in cancer. We also discuss the challenges associated with performing further investigations on this issue. HMGB1-induced autophagy exerts significant functions in cancer and has potential utility for new strategy to reverse drug resistance.
Regulation of transcript structure generates transcript diversity and plays an important role in human disease
. The advent of long-read sequencing technologies offers the opportunity to study the ...role of genetic variation in transcript structure
. In this Article, we present a large human long-read RNA-seq dataset using the Oxford Nanopore Technologies platform from 88 samples from Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) tissues and cell lines, complementing the GTEx resource. We identified just over 70,000 novel transcripts for annotated genes, and validated the protein expression of 10% of novel transcripts. We developed a new computational package, LORALS, to analyse the genetic effects of rare and common variants on the transcriptome by allele-specific analysis of long reads. We characterized allele-specific expression and transcript structure events, providing new insights into the specific transcript alterations caused by common and rare genetic variants and highlighting the resolution gained from long-read data. We were able to perturb the transcript structure upon knockdown of PTBP1, an RNA binding protein that mediates splicing, thereby finding genetic regulatory effects that are modified by the cellular environment. Finally, we used this dataset to enhance variant interpretation and study rare variants leading to aberrant splicing patterns.
Plastic pollution is a global concern given its prevalence in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. Studies have been conducted on the distribution and impact of plastic pollution in marine ecosystems, ...but little is known on terrestrial ecosystems. Plastic mulch has been widely used to increase crop yields worldwide, yet the impact of plastic residues in cropland soils to soil health and crop production in the long term remained unclear. In this paper, using a global meta‐analysis, we found that the use of plastic mulch can indeed increase crop yields on average by 25%–42% in the immediate season due to the increase of soil temperature (+8%) and moisture (+17%). However, the unabated accumulation of film residues in the field negatively impacts its physicochemical properties linked to healthy soil and threatens food production in the long term. It has multiple negative impacts on plant growth including crop yield (at the mean rate of −3% for every additional 100 kg/ha of film residue), plant height (−2%) and root weight (−5%), and soil properties including soil water evaporation capacity (−2%), soil water infiltration rate (−8%), soil organic matter (−0.8%) and soil available phosphorus (−5%) based on meta‐regression. Using a nationwide field survey of China, the largest user of plastic mulch worldwide, we found that plastic residue accumulation in cropland soils has reached 550,800 tonnes, with an estimated 6%–10% reduction in cotton yield in some polluted sites based on current level of plastic residue content. Immediate actions should be taken to ensure the recovery of plastic film mulch and limit further increase in film residue loading to maintain the sustainability of these croplands.
Plastic pollution is a global concern given its prevalence in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. In this paper, we found that the use of plastic mulch can indeed increase crop yields in the immediate season due to the increase of soil temperature and moisture. However, the unabated accumulation of film residues in the field negatively impacts its physicochemical properties linked to healthy soil and threatens food production in the long term. Immediate actions should be taken to ensure the recovery of plastic film mulch and limit further increase in film residue loading to maintain the sustainability of these croplands.
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