Quorum sensing peptides (QSPs) are the signaling molecules used by the Gram-positive bacteria in orchestrating cell-to-cell communication. In spite of their enormous importance in signaling process, ...their detailed bioinformatics analysis is lacking. In this study, QSPs and non-QSPs were examined according to their amino acid composition, residues position, motifs and physicochemical properties. Compositional analysis concludes that QSPs are enriched with aromatic residues like Trp, Tyr and Phe. At the N-terminal, Ser was a dominant residue at maximum positions, namely, first, second, third and fifth while Phe was a preferred residue at first, third and fifth positions from the C-terminal. A few motifs from QSPs were also extracted. Physicochemical properties like aromaticity, molecular weight and secondary structure were found to be distinguishing features of QSPs. Exploiting above properties, we have developed a Support Vector Machine (SVM) based predictive model. During 10-fold cross-validation, SVM achieves maximum accuracy of 93.00%, Mathew's correlation coefficient (MCC) of 0.86 and Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) of 0.98 on the training/testing dataset (T200p+200n). Developed models performed equally well on the validation dataset (V20p+20n). The server also integrates several useful analysis tools like "QSMotifScan", "ProtFrag", "MutGen" and "PhysicoProp". Our analysis reveals important characteristics of QSPs and on the basis of these unique features, we have developed a prediction algorithm "QSPpred" (freely available at: http://crdd.osdd.net/servers/qsppred).
In this work, we have synthesized the zinc‐aluminum layered double hydroxide (ZnAl LDH) nanostructures using cost‐effective hydrothermal technique. The ZnAl LDH and graphene‐based poly(vinyl alcohol) ...(PVA) nanocomposites are fabricated. The crystal structure, morphology, thermal, and dielectric properties of pristine PVA and ZnAl LDH and graphene‐based PVA nanocomposites films were investigated using X‐ray diffraction, HR‐transmission electron microscopy, thermo gravimetric analysis, and impedance analyzer. HRTEM analysis reveals the hexagonal nanoplates shape‐like morphology of Zn‐Al layered double hydroxides with an average thickness of 40–50 nm and size of 400–600 nm. High thermal stability was observed from ZnAl LDH and graphene‐reinforced nanocomposite. Enhanced thermal stability of 250°C and low weight loss was observed from ZnAl LDH reinforced PVA‐based nanocomposites compared to pristine PVA. Zn‐Al LDH nanoplates‐graphene‐PVA based nanocomposites showed ultra‐high dielectric constant (ɛ′) of 794 as compared to the ZnAl LDH‐PVA nanocomposites (ɛ′ ~ 334) and pristine PVA sample (ɛ′ ~ 35). Low dielectric loss of 0.27, 0.18, 0.38 was observed for pristine PVA, ZnAl‐LDH‐PVA and ZnAl‐LDH‐graphene‐PVA nanocomposites. The large enhancement of the dielectric constant and thermal stability were discussed in terms of improved crystallinity, interfacial polarization and formation of nanodipoles in the matrix. This study reveals a significant role of LDH‐graphene‐based hybrid nanocomposites in optoelectronics, energy storage, sensors, energy conversion and thermally stable devices.
Highlights
Growth of highly crystalline zinc‐aluminum layered double hydroxide nanostructures.
Improved thermal stability for Zn‐Al LDH‐graphene‐PVA nanocomposites.
High thermal stability from ZnAl LDH‐based PVA nanocomposites.
Ultra‐high dielectric constant of 794 is observed from Zn‐Al LDH nanoplates‐graphene‐nanocomposites.
PVA‐ZnAl LDH‐graphene nanocomposite.
The present work deals with developing a HA coated Mg alloy material system for application in orthopaedic implants. A nanostructured hydroxyapatite (HA) coating was grown on selected Mg alloy ...(Mg–3Zn) through the electrophoretic deposition (EPD) technique. The mechanical integrity of the coating is established as a function of surface roughness of the substrate and annealing temperature of the coating. Coating on a substrate with lower roughness shows a uniform layer and very few cracks. The mechanical properties of the surfaces help in optimizing the coating conditions to get a better integrated HA coating on the Mg surface. The HA coating shows an impressive 25 times improvement in corrosion resistance of the Mg alloy surface during in vitro exposure. The coating also helps in better growth of bone cells on the Mg surface. This study establishes the potential of electrophoretic deposition of HA coating on Mg–3Zn alloy in orthopaedic application.
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•Electrophoretic HA coating on Mg-alloy improves its potential in orthopaedic implants.•Mechanical integrity of the coating changes with surface roughness of the substrate.•Corrosion rate decrease with increasing annealing temperature of the coating.•HA coating significantly improves the degradation behaviour of Mg-3Zn alloy.•HA coating enhances osteogenic cell adhesion and viability of Mg alloy surface.
Here we report a fully flexible, foldable nanopatterned wearable triboelectric nanogenerator (WTNG) with high power-generating performance and mechanical robustness. Both a silver (Ag)-coated textile ...and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) nanopatterns based on ZnO nanorod arrays on a Ag-coated textile template were used as active triboelectric materials. A high output voltage and current of about 120 V and 65 μA, respectively, were observed from a nanopatterned PDMS-based WTNG, while an output voltage and current of 30 V and 20 μA were obtained by the non-nanopatterned flat PDMS-based WTNG under the same compressive force of 10 kgf. Furthermore, very high voltage and current outputs with an average value of 170 V and 120 μA, respectively, were obtained from a four-layer-stacked WTNG under the same compressive force. Notably it was found there are no significant differences in the output voltages measured from the multilayer-stacked WTNG over 12 000 cycles, confirming the excellent mechanical durability of WTNGs. Finally, we successfully demonstrated the self-powered operation of light-emitting diodes, a liquid crystal display, and a keyless vehicle entry system only with the output power of our WTNG without any help of external power sources.
•Piezoelectric biodegradable eggshell membrane - PVDF layer nanogenerator is fabricated for the first time using solution route.•The developed nanogenerator generated high output voltage of 15 V and ...current of 150 nA even without electrical poling.•Very high output voltage with an average value of 65 V was obtained under 10 kgf force from electrical poled device.•Enhanced polarization, capacitance and their synergy effect interestingly improved the performance of composite nanogenerator.
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Bio-compatible and eco-friendly flexible piezoelectric nanogenerators with transparency are emerging energy devices for next-generation energy application. A novel high performance natural, biodegradable and flexible eggshell membrane – polyvinylidene difluoride (PVDF) based piezoelectric nanogenerator has been developed using a low-temperature solution and spin coating route. X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and Raman patterns exhibited all characteristic signature peaks of the eggshell membrane and PVDF film. Piezoelectric pristine PVDF, eggshell membrane and eggshell membrane-PVDF layered structure based nanogenerators are fabricated using the flexible ITO coated PET substrate and spin coating technique. The fabricated device of eggshell membrane-PVDF layer exhibited better performance with very high output voltage and current of 15 V and 150 nA as compared to 2 V and 20 nA electric output generation from pristine PVDF film based device under same compressive strain, without electric poling. Dielectric properties of piezoelectric PVDF film and eggshell membrane-PVDF were also measured to analyze the working mechanism of the nanogenerator. Hybrid eggshell membrane-PVDF structure shows very high dielectric constant (260) as compared to pristine PVDF (22). A very high output voltage with an average value of 65 V was also obtained from electrical poled hybrid nanogenerator under force of about 10 kgf. Such high piezoelectric output voltage and current from biodegradable eggshell membrane-PVDF based flexible piezoelectric nanogenerator was attributed to dramatic increase in interfacial polarization, capacitance and improved piezoelectric properties of PVDF and triple helical structure created polarization induced electrical dipole moment in the eggshell membrane lattice. The results not only provide a new way to utilize the solid waste for generating green energy from mechanical vibration but also an agent to increase the performance of the PVDF based nanogenerator for powering next generation self-powered implantable medical devices with reduced e-waste elements.
Climate change has devastating effects on plant growth and yield. During ontogenesis, plants are subjected to a variety of abiotic stresses, including drought and salinity, affecting the crop loss ...(20-50%) and making them vulnerable in terms of survival. These stresses lead to the excessive production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) that damage nucleic acid, proteins, and lipids. Plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB) have remarkable capabilities in combating drought and salinity stress and improving plant growth, which enhances the crop productivity and contributes to food security. PGPB inoculation under abiotic stresses promotes plant growth through several modes of actions, such as the production of phytohormones, 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid deaminase, exopolysaccharide, siderophore, hydrogen cyanide, extracellular polymeric substances, volatile organic compounds, modulate antioxidants defense machinery, and abscisic acid, thereby preventing oxidative stress. These bacteria also provide osmotic balance; maintain ion homeostasis; and induce drought and salt-responsive genes, metabolic reprogramming, provide transcriptional changes in ion transporter genes, etc. Therefore, in this review, we summarize the effects of PGPB on drought and salinity stress to mitigate its detrimental effects. Furthermore, we also discuss the mechanistic insights of PGPB towards drought and salinity stress tolerance for sustainable agriculture.
Cancer is a complex worldwide health concern that resulted in 10 million cancer deaths in 2018; hence, early cancer detection is crucial. Early detection involves developing more precise technology ...that offers information about the patient's cancer, allowing clinicians to make better-informed treatment options. This study provides an in-depth analysis of multiple cancers. This study also exhibits a good survey of the machine or deep learning techniques used in cancer research. Also, the study proposed a stacking-based multi-neural ensemble learning method's prediction performance on eight datasets, including the benchmark datasets like Wisconsin Breast cancer dataset, mesothelioma, cervical cancer, non-small cell lung cancer survival dataset, and prostate cancer dataset. This study also analyzes the three real-time cancer datasets (Lung, Ovarian & Leukemia) of the Jammu and Kashmir region. The simulation findings indicate that the methodology described in our study attained the highest level of prediction accuracy across all types of cancer data sets. Additionally, the proposed approach has been statistically validated. The purpose of this investigation was to develop and evaluate a prediction model that might be used as a biomarker for malignancy based on anthropometric, clinical, imaging, and gene data.
Lead-free piezoelectric nano- and microstructure-based generators have recently attracted much attention due to the continuous demand of self-powered body implantable devices. We report the ...fabrication of a high-performance flexible piezoelectric microgenerator based on lead-free inorganic piezoelectric Na0.47K0.47Li0.06NbO3 (NKLN) microcubes for the first time. The composite generator is fabricated using NKLN microcubes and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) polymer on a flexible substrate. The flexible device exhibits excellent performance with a large recordable piezoelectric output voltage of 48 V and output current density of 0.43 μA/cm2 under vertical compressive force of 2 kgf, for which an energy conversion efficiency of about 11% has been achieved. Piezoresponse and ferroelectric studies reveal that NKLN microcubes exhibited high piezoelectric charge coefficient (d33) as high as 460 pC/N and a well-defined hysteresis loops with remnant polarization and coercive field of 13.66 μC/cm2 and 19.45 kV/cm, respectively. The piezoelectric charge generation mechanism from NKLN microgenerator are discussed in the light of the high d33 and alignment of electric dipoles in polymer matrix and dielectric constant of NKLN microcubes. It has been demonstrated that the developed power generator has the potential to generate high electric output power under mechanical vibration for powering biomedical devices in the near future.
•Analysis of 84 different models in noisy imbalanced and incomplete datasets.•MICE and KNN imputation techniques outperform in incomplete imbalanced datasets.•A result shows SMOTE-ENN better in noisy ...imbalanced datasets.•MICE-SMOTE-ENN performs better in noisy imbalanced and incomplete datasets.
Class imbalance creates a considerable impact on the classification of instances using traditional classifiers. Class imbalance, along with other difficulties, creates a significant impact on recognizing instances of minority class. Researchers work in various directions to mitigate class imbalance effect along with noise as well as missing values in datasets. However, combined studies of noisy class imbalance along with incomplete datasets have not been performed yet. This article contains a detailed analysis of 84 different machine learning models to deal with noisy binary class imbalanced and incomplete data using AUC, G-Mean, and F1-score as performance metrics. This article contains a detailed experiment considering missing value imputation and oversampling techniques. The article contains three comparisons: first missing value imputation techniques in incomplete and binary class imbalanced data, second, resampling techniques in noisy binary class imbalanced data, and third, combined techniques in noisy binary class imbalanced and incomplete data. We conclude that MICE and KNN techniques perform well with an increase in the imbalanced dataset's missing value from the first comparison. In second comparison, the SMOTE-ENN technique performs better than state-of-art in noisy binary class imbalanced datasets, and in the third comparison, we conclude that MICE with SMOTE-ENN technique perform well compared to the rest of the techniques.
Pyruvate kinase M2 (PKM2) links metabolic and inflammatory dysfunction in atherosclerotic coronary artery disease; however, its role in oxidized LDL (Ox-LDL)-induced macrophage foam cell formation ...and inflammation is unknown and therefore was studied. In recombinant mouse granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor-differentiated murine bone marrow-derived macrophages, early (1–6 h) Ox-LDL treatment induced PKM2 tyrosine 105 phosphorylation and promotes its nuclear localization. PKM2 regulates aerobic glycolysis and inflammation because PKM2 shRNA or Shikonin abrogated Ox-LDL-induced hypoxia-inducible factor-1α target genes lactate dehydrogenase, glucose transporter member 1, interleukin 1β (IL-1β) mRNA expression, lactate, and secretory IL-1β production. PKM2 inhibition significantly increased Ox-LDL-induced ABCA1 and ABCG1 protein expression and NBD-cholesterol efflux to apoA1 and HDL. PKM2 shRNA significantly inhibited Ox-LDL-induced CD36, FASN protein expression, DiI-Ox-LDL binding and uptake, and cellular total cholesterol, free cholesterol, and cholesteryl ester content. Therefore, PKM2 regulates lipid uptake and efflux. DASA-58, a PKM2 activator, downregulated LXR-α, ABCA1, and ABCG1, and augmented FASN and CD36 protein expression. Peritoneal macrophages showed similar results. Ox-LDL induced PKM2- SREBP-1 interaction and FASN expression in a PKM2-dependent manner. Therefore, this study suggests a role for PKM2 in Ox-LDL-induced aerobic glycolysis, inflammation, and macrophage foam cell formation.
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