An amphiphilic cationic graft polymer polyethylenimine-cystamine-poly( -caprolactone) (PSSP) with intracellular redox potential-responsive cleavable ability was synthesized for the first time by ...coupling poly( -caprolactone) (PCL) to polyethylenimine (PEI)
via
a bio-cleavable disulfide linkage. PSSP based micelles, which can degrade in the intracellular reducing environment, were developed as smart non-viral gene vectors for enhanced miR-34a delivery. The PSSP/miR-34a complexes showed effective and stable miRNA condensation with a narrow particle size of around 120 nm. The gel retardation assay showed that PSSP micelles could protect miRNA from RNase and achieve intracellular release of miRNA in the reducing environment. Compared with PEI-25k, PSSP revealed comparable transfection efficiencies in the B16F10 cell with less cytotoxicity. The B16F10 cell treated with PSSP/miR-34a complexes showed a significantly higher cell apoptosis than the PEI-25k/miR-34a complexes. These encouraging results indicated that PSSP may possess promising potential as a smart non-viral gene vector with low cytotoxicity, intracellular redox potential to trigger miRNA release and high transfection efficiency.
A novel polymer polyethylenimine-cystamine-poly( -caprolactone) with intracellular redox potential-responsive cleavable ability was synthesized and fabricated the micelles as smart gene vectors.
Using as-obtained ZnS-Si biaxial nanowires as templates, which were prepared via a thermal evaporation of a mixed powder of SiO and ZnS under controlled temperature, ZnO-Si biaxial nanowire ...heterostructures were achieved by a simple post-oxidation process. Each ZnO-Si composite nanowire has a uniform diameter along its whole length; the typical diameter of the nanowires ranges from 100 to 500 nm, and the diameters of Si- and ZnO-side sub-nanowires within a nanowire heterostructure are 650-250 nm. Significant enhancement of green luminescence compared to the ZnO nanowires has been observed from these ZnO-Si biaxial nanowire heterostructures, which may find the applications in short wavelength photoelectric devices, fluorescence labels, and biological detectors. The present template-assisted method demonstrated here could be a general approach of fabricating nanowire heterostructures made of Si-based materials.
Structurally uniform PbTe nanotubes with high crystal quality have been successfully synthesized @@ivia@ a thermal chemical reaction process. As-synthesized PbTe nanotubes displayed regularly ...rectangular or square faceted, tapered shape with a thickness as thin as 620-40 nm, and a length of several kn; each faceted PbTe nanotube is enclosed by four {100} crystal planes, and the tube axis is in the 100 direction; for a given tapered tube, the root reaches a diameter of 6100-300 nm, and the tip size varies from several to tens of nanometers. Such special shape and available sizes can make the manipulations easier for use in scanning probes; a spacious internal tube cavity may be further filled with different materials leading to interesting thermoelectric nanodevices.
Porcine cumulus cells are localized around oocytes and act as a specific type of granulosa that plays essential roles in the development and maturation of oocytes, the development and atresia of ...follicles, and the development of embryos. Studies of FAT1 have demonstrated its functions in cell-cell contact, actin dynamics, and cell growth suppression. To understand whether the FAT1 gene affects the apoptosis of porcine cumulus cells and to elucidate the mechanism of this potential action, FAT1 was knocked down using RNA interference. The lack of FAT1 resulted in stable expression of CTNNB, enhanced expression of cleaved CASP3, but decreased the BCL2/BAX ratios at both the mRNA and protein levels. These results indicated that FAT1 inhibited porcine cumulus cell apoptosis via different pathways. Taken together, these data provide new insights into the mechanisms of the association between FAT1 and porcine cumulus cell apoptosis.
Reconstructing the sparse signal from a few linear measurements has attracted increasing attentions in recent years. In this study, the authors propose the alternating projection (AP) method for ...sparse signal recovery with learning the sparsity of the original signal. Different with classical hard thresholding algorithms, the AP method regards the signal recovery problem as finding an intersect point of two sets. Theoretically, the authors prove that the proposed algorithm can reconstruct the s-sparse original signal provided the sensing matrix satisfies several assumptions when the noise is absent. They also prove that AP method is a noise-robust algorithm, i.e. a tolerable reconstruction can be obtained by AP if the noise is small. In numerical experiments, the authors compare AP with several existing algorithms when being applied to sparse signals recovery and images reconstruction. The results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.
As the low-voltage distribution network contains many three-phase unbalanced loads and single-phase loads, and the sequence of power consumption of different types of loads varies greatly, the actual ...power loss of the network increases more than that under three-phase balance. This paper proposes a loss reduction strategy based on phase swapping. By swapping phase of loads, it makes the three-phase transmission power of each branch realize balance in a long period, thus achieving the objective of loss reduction.
Though postoperative radiation for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma is offered in selected cases, there is conflicting evidence as to whether it improves overall survival (OS). A retrospective ...investigation was performed to analyze the prognostic impact of postoperative radiation therapy (PORT) in a large cohort of patients.
From 2001 to 2009, 725 patients underwent radical esophagectomy (R0) with or without PORT were eligible for retrospective analysis. Patients were grouped into surgery alone (n = 467) and surgery plus PORT (n = 258). Median irradiation doses were 50 Gy (range: 40-56 Gy). Radiation fields encompassed the bilateral supraclavicular fossa, mediastinum, subcarinal area, and the tumor bed for the upper/middle-third disease; the bilateral supraclavicular fossa, mediastinum, the tumor bed, subcarinal area, and lower thoracic paraesophageal area for the lower-third disease. Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression analysis were used to compare OS.
After median follow-up of 53 months, the median OS was 29 months in the PORT group and 23 months in the surgery alone group. The addition of PORT improved OS at 3 years from 36.6 to 43.6% compared with surgery alone. The use of PORT was associated with significantly improved OS (p = 0.018). For American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) stage III esophageal cancer (T1-2N2M0, T3N1-2M0, T4N1-3M0), there was significant improvement in OS (p = 0.002) in the PORT group, not only for lymph-node metastatic ratio (LNMR) ≥0.25 (p = 0.001), but also for LNMR <0.25 (p = 0.043). However, for stage IIB disease (T1-2N1M0) there was no significant differences. The addition of POCT didn't prolong the OS significantly (Surgery alone group, p = 0.079; PORT group, p = 0.111).
This large retrospective analysis supports the use of PORT for pathologic lymph node positive stage III esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. Given the retrospective nature of this study, the results should be confirmed by appropriately powered randomized trials. Further development of adjuvant therapy in EC is warranted.
•Complex C1 was synthesized using multi-component self-assembly strategy.•Complex C1 showed sensitive and selective detection towards Zn2+ in “turn-on” mode.•The “on-off” sensing behavior was ...recovered by treating with EDTA and Zn2+.
Heteroleptic copper(I)–phosphine complexes have attracted considerable attention due to their diverse structures and photophysical properties. In this work, a novel heteroleptic binuclear copper (I) complex C1·2BF4ˉ was designed and synthesized by using hexaazatriphenylene (L1) and 4, 5-Bis(diphenylphosphino)-9, 9-dimethylxanthene (dppd) as functional ligands. Such dinuclear structure with defective site was fully characterized by NMR, single-crystal X-ray diffraction analysis, and electron spray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS). UV-vis and fluorescence spectrum revealed that the well-defined Cu(I) complex had a green emission at 518 nm in acetonitrile solution, and a red emission at 824 nm in the solid state. The DFT calculation demonstrated that the energy gap between LUMO and HOMO orbitals reached 1.20 eV. Furthermore, such heteroleptic Cu(I) complex showed high sensitivity and selectivity towards Zn2+ in acetonitrile solution in “turn-on” mode, which can be attributed to the coordination interaction between Zn2+ and defective binding site of probe C1·2BF4−. The LOD for Zn2+ was calculated to be 0.298 µM, and the reversible “on-off” fluorescence sensing behavior can be recovered by alternative treatment with EDTA tetrasodium and Zn2+ salts in solution. The Cu(I) complex probe C1·2BF4ˉ had reversible redox property with weak electrochemical responses towards Zn2+ ions.
We report here the fabrication of a Janus wire mesh by a combined process of laser structuring and fluorosilane/graphene oxide (GO) modification of the two sides of the mesh, respectively, toward its ...applications in efficient oil/water separation. Femtosecond laser processing has been employed to make different laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS) on each side of the mesh. Surface modification with fluorosilane on one side and GO on the other side endows the two sides of the Janus mesh with distinct wettability. Thus, one side is superhydrophobic and superoleophilic in air, and the other side is superhydrophilic in air and superoleophobic under water. As a proof of concept, we demonstrated the separation of light/heavy oil and water mixtures using this Janus mesh. To realize an efficient separation, the intrusion pressure that is dominated by the wire mesh framework and the wettability should be taken into account. Our strategy may open up a new way to design and fabricate Janus structures with distinct wettability; and the resultant Janus mesh may find broad applications in the separation of oil contaminants from water.
We fabricate a Janus wire mesh by laser structuring and subsequent fluorosilane/graphene oxide modification for efficient oil/water separation.
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