Abstract
Beyond storage and transmission of genetic information in cellular life, nucleic acids can perform diverse interesting functions, including specific target recognition and biochemical ...reaction acceleration; the versatile biopolymers, however, are acutely vulnerable to hydrolysis-driven degradation. Here, we demonstrate that the cage effect of choline dihydrogen phosphate permits active folding of nucleic acids like water, but prevents their phosphodiester hydrolysis unlike water. The choline-based ionic liquid not only serves as a universal inhibitor of nucleases, exceptionally extending half-lives of nucleic acids up to 6 500 000 times, but highly useful tasks of nucleic acids (e.g. mRNA detection of molecular beacons, ligand recognition of aptamers, and transesterification reaction of ribozymes) can be also conducted with well-conserved affinities and specificities. As liberated from the function loss and degradation risk, the presence of undesired and unknown nucleases does not undermine desired molecular functions of nucleic acids without hydrolysis artifacts even in nuclease cocktails and human saliva.
Graphical Abstract
Graphical Abstract
Purpose: The first purpose of this study is deriving in-store characteristics that affect the experience of customers using unmanned stores and reveals the value of major services that customers feel ...and experience. Also, an empirical analysis is conducted on the effect of intelligent consumption value after using unmanned stores on consumption emotions and continuous use intention, and the modulating effect of customers' untact tendency on environmental characteristics and the value of intelligent services is verified. Research design, data and methodology: Samples were taken from 186 people who visited the unmanned store from April to June 2022 to investigate the research model. Results: It was found that the environmental characteristics of unmanned stores had a positive effect on the intelligent service value. Also, the higher the value of intelligent service, the stronger the influence on consumption emotions, and the higher the value of the intelligence service and consumption emotions, the stronger the impact on the intention to use intention. The untact propensity played a role in controlling the relationship between ease of using technology and the intelligent service value and the relationship between spatial arrangement and functionality and intelligent service value. Conclusion: In order to improve unmanned store service in the trend of spreading unmanned stores, it is necessary to not only improve the technology using convenience in terms of store environmental characteristics but also create innovative consumption experiences in terms of space layout, function, and convenience of payment.
Abstract
DNA can assume various structures as a result of interactions at atomic and molecular levels (e.g., hydrogen bonds, π–π stacking interactions, and electrostatic potentials), so understanding ...of the consequences of these interactions could guide development of ways to produce elaborate programmable DNA for applications in bio- and nanotechnology. We conducted advanced ab initio calculations to investigate nucleobase model structures by componentizing their donor-acceptor interactions. By unifying computational conditions, we compared the independent interactions of DNA duplexes, triplexes, and quadruplexes, which led us to evaluate a stability trend among Watson–Crick and Hoogsteen base pairing, stacking, and even ion binding. For a realistic solution-like environment, the influence of water molecules was carefully considered, and the potassium-ion preference of G-quadruplex was first analyzed at an ab initio level by considering both base-base and ion-water interactions. We devised new structure factors including hydrogen bond length, glycosidic vector angle, and twist angle, which were highly effective for comparison between computationally-predicted and experimentally-determined structures; we clarified the function of phosphate backbone during nucleobase ordering. The simulated tendency of net interaction energies agreed well with that of real world, and this agreement validates the potential of ab initio study to guide programming of complicated DNA constructs.
Research on bimodal contrast agents in general and optical/MRI contrast agents in particular has attracted increased attention from the scientific community in recent years. Whereas optical contrast ...agents reveal pathologies at the cellular or sub-cellular level, MRI contrast agents generally report physiological differences at the level of tissues and organs. The complementary information obtained from these two techniques allows for a more precise diagnosis. Furthermore the emergence of near-infrared luminophores accommodates the simultaneous detection of optical and MRI signals. The current multitude and diversity in molecular architectures mirrors the ever increasing interest in the field. In this review the developments between 2010 and mid-2014 are highlighted.
A high‐performance energy storage device plays an important role in controlling carbon emissions. The emerging additive manufacturing techniques bring a great revolution of electrode fabrication ...process and promote the performance of energy storage devices through the advanced electrode architecture design. In this paper, recent studies on the three‐dimensional (3D)‐printed electrode with advanced architecture have been mainly reviewed, including interdigitated structure, through‐thickness aligned structure, hierarchical porous structure and fiber and fibric structure of electrodes, and expectations for the development of novel advanced electrode architecture generated and optimized by computational simulation and machine learning. The strategy of advanced electrode architecture design and fabrication enabled by the 3D printing technique represents a promising direction toward future energy storage devices with high electrochemical and mechanical performance.
Energy storage devices have been developed for high energy density and power density with a long lifetime. Three‐dimensional (3D) printing is a prominent technology for manipulating the device's electrode structure design to provide better performance. This review summarizes the critical role of 3D printing techniques in advanced electrode architecture design and fabrication and shares our thoughts on future 3D printing electrode development.
We performed a prospective survey on the adverse reactions following the first dose of two types of vaccines against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in healthcare workers (HCWs) in South Korea.
...HCWs at a tertiary referral hospital in Seoul, South Korea, received a chimpanzee adenovirus-vectored vaccine (ChAdOx1 nCoV-19) or an mRNA-based vaccine (BNT162b2) between March 5 and March 26, 2021. The HCWs were asked to report adverse reactions through a mobile self-report questionnaire for three days after vaccination.
A total of 7,625 HCWs received the first dose of ChAdOx1 or BNT162b2 vaccine during the study period. Of them, 5,866 (76.9%) HCWs (ChAdOx1, n = 5,589 95.3%; BNT162b2, n = 277 4.7%) participated at least once in the survey, of whom 77% were female and 86% were younger than 50 years. The overall adverse reaction rate was 93% in the ChAdOx1 group and 80% in the BNT162b2 group (
< 0.001). Both local and systemic reactions were more commonly reported in the ChAdOx1 group, and the difference was larger in systemic reactions such as fever and fatigue. In the ChAdOx1 group, the incidence of adverse reactions was significantly higher in females and those in the younger age groups, while the BNT162b2 group showed such difference according to age.
In our prospective survey, vaccine-associated adverse reactions were more commonly reported in the ChAdOx1 group than in the BNT162b2 group. Females and younger age groups experienced vaccine-associated adverse reactions more frequently.
Most biological molecular complexes consist of multiple functional domains, yet rationally constructing such multifunctional complexes is challenging. Aptamers, the nucleic acid-based functional ...molecules, can perform multiple tasks including target recognition, conformational changes, and enzymatic activities, while being chemically synthesizable and tunable, and thus provide a basis for engineering enhanced functionalities through combination of multiple units. However, the conventional approach of simply combining aptamer units in a serial manner is susceptible to undesired crosstalk or interference between the aptamer units and to false interactions with non-target molecules; besides, the approach would require additional mechanisms to separate the units if they are desired to function independently. It is clearly a challenge to develop multi-aptamer complexes that preserve independent functions of each unit while avoiding undesired interference and non-specific interactions.
By directly in vitro selecting a ‘trans’ aptamer complex, we demonstrate that one aptamer unit (‘utility module’) can remain hidden or ‘inactive’ until a target analyte triggers the other unit (‘sensing module’) and separates the two aptamers. Since the operation of the utility module occurs free from the sensing module, unnecessary crosstalk between the two units can be avoided. Because the utility module is kept inactive until separated from the complex, non-specific interactions of the hidden module with noncognate targets can be naturally prevented. In our demonstration, the sensing module was selected to detect serotonin, a clinically important neurotransmitter, and the target-binding-induced structure-switching of the sensing module reveals and activates the utility module that turns on a fluorescence signal. The aptamer complex exhibited a moderately high affinity and an excellent specificity for serotonin with ∼16-fold discrimination against common neurotransmitter molecules, and displayed strong robustness to perturbations in the design, disallowing nonspecific reactions against various challenges.
This work represents the first example of a trans aptamer complex that was in vitro selected de novo. The trans aptamer complex selected by our strategy does not require chemical modifications or immediate optimization processes to function, because the complex is directly selected to perform desired functions. This strategy should be applicable to a wide range of functional nucleic acid moieties, which will open up diverse applications in biosensing and molecular therapeutics.
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•In vitro selection strategy for trans aptamer complex is reported.•Utility module can remain inactive until target triggers the sensing module.•Structure-switching causes the complex to separate and activate fluorescence signal.•Undesired crosstalk, interference and non-specific binding can be avoided.•Complex shows strong target specificity with 16x higher signal than from non-target.
Ribozymes are functional RNA molecules that can catalyze biochemical reactions. Since the discovery of the first catalytic RNA, various functional ribozymes (e.g., self-cleaving ribozymes, splicing ...ribozymes, RNase P, etc.) have been uncovered, and their structures and mechanisms have been identified. Ribozymes have the advantage of possessing features of “RNA” molecules; hence, they are highly applicable for manipulating various biological systems. To fully employ ribozymes in a broad range of biological applications in synthetic biology, a variety of ribozymes have been developed and engineered. Here, we summarize the main features of ribozymes and the methods used for engineering their functions. We also describe the past and recent efforts towards exploiting ribozymes for effective and novel applications in synthetic biology. Based on studies on their significance in biological applications till date, ribozymes are expected to advance technologies in artificial biological systems.
•Unique features of catalytic RNAs over protein enzymes.•Characteristics of ribozymes and their engineering strategies.•Interesting applications of ribozymes in the field of synthetic biology.•Current challenges of ribozyme-based biotechnology and future perspectives.
Abstract Background Recent advances in Vision Transformer (ViT)-based deep learning have significantly improved the accuracy of lung disease prediction from chest X-ray images. However, limited ...research exists on comparing the effectiveness of different optimizers for lung disease prediction within ViT models. This study aims to systematically evaluate and compare the performance of various optimization methods for ViT-based models in predicting lung diseases from chest X-ray images. Methods This study utilized a chest X-ray image dataset comprising 19,003 images containing both normal cases and six lung diseases: COVID-19, Viral Pneumonia, Bacterial Pneumonia, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), and Tuberculosis. Each ViT model (ViT, FastViT, and CrossViT) was individually trained with each optimization method (Adam, AdamW, NAdam, RAdam, SGDW, and Momentum) to assess their performance in lung disease prediction. Results When tested with ViT on the dataset with balanced-sample sized classes, RAdam demonstrated superior accuracy compared to other optimizers, achieving 95.87%. In the dataset with imbalanced sample size, FastViT with NAdam achieved the best performance with an accuracy of 97.63%. Conclusions We provide comprehensive optimization strategies for developing ViT-based model architectures, which can enhance the performance of these models for lung disease prediction from chest X-ray images.
Human-animal interaction (HAI) has been observed to effectively reduce stress and induce positive emotions owing to the process of directly petting and interacting with animals. Interaction with ...virtual animals has recently emerged as an alternative due to the limitations in general physical interactions, both due to the COVID-19 pandemic and, more generally, due to the difficulties involved in providing adequate care for animals. This study proposes mixed reality (MR)-based human-animal interaction content along with presenting the experimental verification of its effect on the reduction of mental stress. A mental arithmetic task was employed to induce acute mental stress, which was followed by either MR content, in which a participant interacted with virtual animals via gestures and voice commands, or a slide show of animal images. During the experiment, an electrocardiogram (ECG) was continuously recorded with a patch-type, wireless ECG sensor on the chest of the subject, and their psychological state was evaluated with the help of questionnaires after each task. The findings of the study demonstrate that the MR-based interaction with virtual animals significantly reduces mental stress and induces positive emotions. We expect that this study could provide a basis for the widespread use of MR-based content in the field of mental health.
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