JCIS open最新文献

This study examines the preparation of PVDF hybrid membranes mixed with natural zeolite mordenite, which are functionalized with various organosilanes, i.e., 3-aminopropyl-triethoxysilane (APTES), 3-ethylenediaminopropyl-trimethoxysilane (EDAPTMS), and 3-mercapto-propyl-trimethoxysilane (MPTMS) compounds. The addition of mordenite-MPTMS increased the β fraction on the hybrid membrane surfaces and improved the membrane hydrophilicity. The shape of the macropores in PME tends to be round, with the largest size among other hybrid membrane macropores resulting in the highest porosity. The congo red dye is very well filtered by all PVDF and hybrid membranes, with a rejection value of around 99%. The increase in porosity was parallel to the water flux value in the hybrid membrane, which is PME produces the highest water flux value. The degree of membrane pores fouling during the filtration of the congo red dye was successfully reduced by the addition of organosilane-modified mordenite.

It was hypothesized that activated carbons (ACs) prepared from hydrochar could be dispersed in solvents under certain conditions. The crude hydrochar formed by the hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) of glucose and was purified by dialysis. Dried dispersions of hydrochar were chemically activated with potassium bicarbonate (KHCO₃) at temperatures of 750–800 ​°C in N₂. The AC prepared from a freeze-dried dispersion of hydrochar could be dispersed in ethanol as 500 nm-sized colloids. It was noted that on regular drying of the hydrochar dispersions, macroscopically large, long, curved, and thin rods of hydrochar formed in the vials. The rods comprised colloidally-packed spherical particles. The rods may have formed from cracked and fractured colloidal coatings and detached from the wall of the vials. This conclusion was supported by analysing the structural features of the rods. The macroscopic shapes were retained on the chemical activation when the hydrochar precursor had been pyrolyzed in N₂ before activation. The ACs had specific surface areas of up to 1800 ​m²/g, and CO₂ uptake levels of up to 7.1 ​mmol/g at 0 ​°C and 101 ​kPa.

The lung is an attractive target for drug delivery because of the ease of non-invasive administration via inhalation, bypassing metabolism in the liver, direct delivery to the respiratory system for treatment of respiratory diseases, and a large surface area for drug absorption. Nanocarrier systems offer several benefits for pulmonary drug delivery, including uniform drug distribution among alveoli, improved drug solubility, sustained drug release, which reduces the dosing frequency and enhances patient compliance, and potential for cell drug internalization. Nanomedicine is also being utilized to combat emerging infectious illnesses like SARS-CoV, SARS-CoV-2, MERS-CoV, and influenza A/H1N1. This review gives a quick rundown of pulmonary diseases caused by infectious agents such as bacterial, viral, and biological roadblocks that prevent effective treatment of recalcitrant respiratory tract infections. We emphasized and summarized recent efforts to combat these infections using novel inhaled formulation-mediated pulmonary delivery strategies like nanocarriers such as liposomes, polymeric nanoparticles, and SLNs. In addition, we also reviewed the latest findings and advancements regarding the development of inhalable novel formulations that circumvent biological barriers and boost drug bioavailability.

Molecular docking (Mol.Doc) techniques were employed to ascertain the binding affinity and energetics of hydroxy derivatives of benzoic and cinnamic acids extract from Psidium guajava L. with Human Serum Albumin (HSA). Caffeic acid (CA), Ferullic acid (FA), Sinapic acid (SA), Syringic acid (SyA) and Vanillic acid (VA) are the derivatives phenolic acids (DPA) employed in docking studies which acts as the guest molecule. Docking of various feasible conformers of DPA with HSA (host) was explored and these conformers were categorized based on the docking score which is correlated to the binding energy (BE) and the stability depends upon the molecular interactions. Among the phenolic acids, SA-HSA complex was energetically more favorable and feasible based on BE and the order of binding stability upon complex formation of various DPA-HSA follows the order SA > FA = CA > VA > SyA, though SA and SyA are structurally similar to each other, likewise FA and VA exhibit a similar structure. The stability upon complex formation is correlated to the docking of the guest molecule in the binding domains of HSA and several molecular interactions. Hydrogen-bonding (HB) interaction governs the stability of host-guest complex is established. Interestingly, the presence of multiple hydrophobic interactions (pi-pi, pi-alkyl, pi-cation or anion, pi-sigma and pi-amide) competes over HB interaction in several conformers resulting in a decrease in BE. We report that SA acts as an excellent site selective and site-specific ligand that prefers to dock in Sudlow binding site II comprising of sub domains IIIA and IIIB respectively. However, all other phenolic acids do not behave neither as site selective nor site specific ligand such that they prefer to reside both in site II and site III (non-Sudlow binding site) of HSA. We authenticate that all the DPA as well as the amino acid moieties in HSA act as HB donor as well as acceptor sites apart from several hydrophobic interactions. We further establish that all the DPA has the least probable affinity to reside in binding site I (warfarin binding site), whereas sub domain IIIA of site II is the most preferred site which is energetically most favoured among all the sub domains.

The development of antibacterial photocatalytic nanomaterials is important. Here, we prepared Zn-porphyrin nanodisks by exfoliation of covalent organic frameworks (COFs). We exfoliated COFs with free-base porphyrins by simple simultaneous coordination of Zn²⁺ and 4-ethylphyridine. The synthesized Zn-porphyrin nanodisks exhibited higher photocatalytic singlet oxygen production by visible light irradiation, and showed substantial light-irradiated antimicrobial activity against Escherichia coli.

When a soft glassy colloidal suspension is displaced by a Newtonian fluid in a radial Hele-Shaw geometry, the pattern morphology that develops at the interface is determined by the complex rheology of the former. We had reported in an earlier work [Palak, V. R. S. Parmar, D. Saha and R. Bandyopadhyay, JCIS Open, 6 (2022) 100047] that a range of pattern morphologies characterised by distinctive structural features can be formed by controlling the elasticity of the displaced suspension, the flow rate of the displacing fluid and the interfacial tension of the fluid pair. Interestingly, all the different morphological features can be distinguished in terms of their areal ratios, defined as the ratio of the areas occupied by the fully-developed pattern and the smallest circle enclosing it. In a significant advance to this earlier work, we show here that a systematic study of spatio-temporal pattern growth can reveal important information about pattern selection mechanisms. We analyse the time-evolution of the patterns to reveal interesting correlations between their growth mechanisms and fully-developed morphologies. We believe that such systematic identification of the unique temporal features characterising pattern growth at the interface between an aging viscoelastic clay suspension and a Newtonian fluid can be useful in pre-empting and suppressing the onset and evolution of interfacial instabilities in the displacement of mud and cement slurries.

Pesticides are widely used around the home and in agriculture to control unwanted populations; however, they may also be toxic to non-targeted organisms. Because traditional methods of assessing pesticide toxicity are expensive, lengthy, and ethically questionable, we evaluated pesticide toxicities using stimuli-responses in liposomes. Pesticide ecotoxicity was evaluated using 1,2-dipalmitoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DPPC) and 1,2-dioleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DOPC) liposomes. Changes in membrane permeability were measured using calcein leakage assays as stimuli-responses in the presence of six pesticides (Chlorpyrifos-methyl, fluometuron, imidacloprid, pirimicarb, pyrethrin, and quizalofop-ethyl), for which the calcein release rate was analyzed using a first-order kinetics equation. The calcein release rate constants of the DPPC liposomes were used to classify the pesticides into lower and higher toxicity groups. In each group, the initial calcein release rate from the DPPC/DOPC liposomes mixed with 33 ​mol% DOPC correlated well with previously reported pesticide toxicities. The DOPC liposomes underwent lateral phase separation in a different manner between the two toxicity groups. Pesticides with lower toxicities were partitioned in the DPPC-enriched phase, disrupting the gel phase order through their hydrophobicity, whereas pesticides with higher toxicity were partitioned in the DOPC-enriched phase and stabilizing the liquid disordered phase owing to their hydrophobicity and molecular shape. The toxicity of each pesticide was well represented by an equation that combined the calcein release rate constant of the DPPC liposomes and the initial calcein release rate of the 33 ​mol% DOPC mixed liposomes. The findings indicate that stimuli-response assays using liposomes can be used to complement traditional ecotoxicity assessments.

Hypothesis

Selected vape additives, vitamin E acetate and CBD, are suspected agents in pathology of vape related lung illnesses. The lipophilic nature of these molecules allow them to partition into lung surfactant and disrupt proper function. Such dysfunction can lead to respiratory distress and hypoxemia, two common symptoms of this new class of lung injury.

Experiments

Lung surfactant models were formed by depositing lipids at the air-water interface on a Langmuir-Blodgett trough. Surface pressure-area isotherms were conducted for lipid-additive systems to determine changes in lipid packing, film elasticity, and film stability, while Brewster angle microscopy was used to visualize lateral film organization.

Findings

Vape additives were found to interfere with proper lipid packing, inducing fluidization throughout the lipid films. Additionally, this hindered the formation of lipid condensed domains. Such structures are necessary for surfactant protein anchoring in order to facilitate the formation of multilayers. In complex model systems, this vital processes was significantly impaired, namely by vitamin e acetate. These data suggest a vape additive induced dysfunction of lipid films which may be involved in the pathology of vape-related lung injury.

A novel green pectin-driven sol-gel with an auto-combustion route was successfully applied for the synthesis of manganese oxide catalysts, which exhibited superior catalytic performance for low-temperature combustion of toluene compared to those cases using manganese oxide catalysts synthesized by traditional citric acid and glycine-driven sol-gel routes. The characterization results showed that the MnO_x-P catalyst synthesized by the present method exhibited a unique hierarchical mesoporous structure with lower crystallinity and smaller grain size, leading to abundant active species and defect structures. Comparing with the catalysts synthesized by those traditional sol-gel methods, the MnO_x-P catalyst had excellent low-temperature reducible performance and better oxygen mobility, which is considered to be resulted from the specific interaction of chelation and calcination processes. In addition, the MnO_x-P catalyst exhibited satisfactory long-term stability and water tolerance during catalytic toluene combustion process.

Metal nanoparticles (NPs), such as gold NPs (AuNPs), are particularly sensitive to X-rays, and thus specific accumulation of AuNPs in a tumor would allow radiotherapy with low energy X-rays and reduced side effects. AuNPs can be generated using HAuCl₄ and the natural polyphenol epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) in the presence of citrate. Here, we generated EGCG-AuNPs in the presence of several additives and examined the accumulation of these NPs in mouse tumors following intravenous administration. EGCG-AuNPs 15 ​nm in diameter in the presence of sodium alginate accumulated more in tumors compared to 40-nm-diameter EGCG-AuNPs. Furthermore, the results of in vitro cellular uptake and serum protein absorption studies suggest that adsorption of 15–16 ​kDa serum proteins to EGCG-AuNPs suppresses accumulation in tumors. Thus, tendency to adsorb specific proteins on EGCG-AuNPs surface should be tailored for enhancing their accumulation in tumors.