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The intracellular protein HMGB1 is released from cells and acts as a damage-associated molecular pattern molecule during many diseases, including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD); however, the intracellular function of HMGB1 during inflammation is poorly understood. Here, we demonstrated that cytosolic HMGB1 regulates apoptosis by protecting the autophagy proteins beclin 1 and ATG5 from calpain-mediated cleavage during inflammation. Colitis in mice with an intestinal epithelial cell-specific Hmgb1 deletion and patients with IBD were both characterized by increased calpain activation, beclin 1 and ATG5 cleavage, and intestinal epithelial cell (IEC) death compared with controls. In vitro cleavage assays and studies of enteroids verified that HMGB1 protects beclin 1 and ATG5 from calpain-mediated cleavage events that generate proapoptotic protein fragments. Together, our results indicate that HMGB1 is essential for mitigating the extent and severity of inflammation-associated cellular injury by controlling the switch between the proautophagic and proapoptotic functions of beclin 1 and ATG5 during inflammation. Moreover, these studies demonstrate that HMGB1 is pivotal for reducing tissue injury in IBD and other complex inflammatory disorders.

Mucosal healing following inflammatory injury is poorly understood and often neglected, despite being the best indicator of long-term outcomes in inflammatory bowel diseases. We report here that the enigmatic small molecular weight heat shock protein, Hsp25 (the human form is Hsp27), plays a vital role in converging microbial and host factors to promote pSTAT3-mediated mucosal healing. In wild type mice, the proximal-to-distal gradient of intestinal epithelial cell (IEC) Hsp25 expression is dependent on microbial cues. Patients with left-sided ulcerative colitis, however, show reduced levels of Hsp27 expression in both uninvolved and involved areas compared to normal colons of non-IBD patients. In mice with global or IEC-specific Hsp25 gene-targeted deletion, impaired mucosal healing with development of hallmarks of chronic disease are observed following DSS-induced or TNBS-induced colitis, whereas mucosal restitution is accelerated in IEC-specific overexpressing Hsp25 transgenic mice. In colonic IECs derived from these murine lines, Hsp25 binds and stabilizes a phospho-STAT3/YAP nuclear complex stimulated by IL-22 to sustain its wound healing gene programming. Thus, our findings provide insight into the mechanism of action of IEC Hsp25/27 in integrating host and microbial drivers of mucosal restitution, which can be leveraged to develop novel approaches for achieving and maintaining remission in complex immune disorders like IBD. Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.

The membrane electrode assembly (MEA) is promising for practical applications of the electrocatalytic CO 2 reduction reaction (CO 2 RR) to multi-carbon (C 2+ ) compounds. Water management is crucial in the MEA electrolyser without catholyte, but few studies have clarified whether the co-feeding water in cathode can enhance C 2+ formation. Here, we report our discovery of pivotal roles of a suitable nanocomposite electrocatalyst with abundant Cu 2 O−Cu 0 interfaces in accomplishing water-promoting effect on C 2+ formation, achieving a current density of 1.0 A cm −2 and a 19% single-pass C 2+ yield at 80% C 2+ Faradaic efficiency in MEA. The operando characterizations confirm the co-existence of Cu + with Cu 0 during CO 2 RR at ampere-level current densities. Our studies reveal that Cu + works for water activation and aids C‒C coupling by enhancing formations of adsorbed CO and CHO species. This work offers a strategy to boost CO 2 RR to C 2+ compounds in industrial-relevant MEA by combining water management and electrocatalyst design. Water plays a key role in electrocatalytic CO 2 reduction, but the role of catalyst in water management is unknown. Here, the authors report the importance of catalyst in determining the function of water and demonstrate that the catalyst containing Cu + promotes water activation and C 2+ formation.

Photonic spin skyrmions with deep‐subwavelength features have aroused considerable interest in recent years. However, the manipulation of spin structure in the skyrmions in a desired manner is still a challenge, while this is crucial for developing the skyrmion‐based applications. Here, an approach of optical spin manipulation by utilizing the spin‐momentum equation is proposed to investigate the spin texture in a photonic skyrmion‐pair. With the benefit of the proposed approach, a unique spin texture with spin angular momentum varying linearly along the line connecting the two skyrmion centers is theoretically designed and experimentally verified. The optimized spin texture is then applied in a displacement‐sensing system, which is capable of attaining pico‐metric sensitivity. Compared with the conventional polarization and phase schemes, the spin‐based manipulation mechanism provides a new pathway for optical modulation, which is of great value in nanophotonics from both fundamental and application. A robust, Angstrom‐scaled displacement‐sensing technique is proposed based on the structured spin texture in a photonic skyrmion‐pair, where the interaction between the skyrmions induces a linear change in spin texture within its central region over distances of hundred‐nanometers.

Understanding the structures and reaction mechanisms of interfacial active sites in the Fisher-Tropsch synthesis reaction is highly desirable but challenging. Herein, we show that the ZrO 2 -Ru interface could be engineered by loading the ZrO 2 promoter onto silica-supported Ru nanoparticles (ZrRu/SiO 2 ), achieving 7.6 times higher intrinsic activity and ~45% reduction in the apparent activation energy compared with the unpromoted Ru/SiO 2 catalyst. Various characterizations and theoretical calculations reveal that the highly dispersed ZrO 2 promoter strongly binds the Ru nanoparticles to form the Zr-O-Ru interfacial structure, which strengthens the hydrogen spillover effect and serves as a reservoir for active H species by forming Zr-OH* species. In particular, the formation of the Zr-O-Ru interface and presence of the hydroxyl species alter the H-assisted CO dissociation route from the formyl (HCO*) pathway to the hydroxy-methylidyne (COH*) pathway, significantly lowering the energy barrier of rate-limiting CO dissociation step and greatly increasing the reactivity. This investigation deepens our understanding of the metal-promoter interaction, and provides an effective strategy to design efficient industrial Fisher-Tropsch synthesis catalysts. Understanding the structures of interfacial active sites is crucial in heterogeneous catalysis. Here the authors demonstrate that a ZrO 2 -Ru interface site significantly enhances reactivity in the Fischer-Tropsch to olefins process by altering the H-assisted CO dissociation route due to the presence of hydroxy species associated with Zr-OH*.

Syngas conversion serves as a competitive strategy to produce olefins chemicals from nonpetroleum resources. However, the goal to achieve desirable olefins selectivity with limited undesired C1 by-products remains a grand challenge. Herein, we present a non-classical Fischer-Tropsch to olefins process featuring high carbon efficiency that realizes 80.1% olefins selectivity with ultralow total selectivity of CH 4 and CO 2 (<5%) at CO conversion of 45.8%. This is enabled by sodium-promoted metallic ruthenium (Ru) nanoparticles with negligible water-gas-shift reactivity. Change in the local electronic structure and the decreased reactivity of chemisorbed H species on Ru surfaces tailor the reaction pathway to favor olefins production. No obvious deactivation is observed within 550 hours and the pellet catalyst also exhibits excellent catalytic performance in a pilot-scale reactor, suggesting promising practical applications. Zhong et al report sodium-promoted metallic Ru nanoparticles for the direct production of olefins from syngas with ultrahigh carbon efficiency where the total selectivity of undesired CH 4 and CO 2 is suppressed to only 5% for over 500 hours on stream.

It is widely acknowledged that splash impact can be suppressed by increasing the viscosity of the impinging drop. In this work, however, by imposing a highly viscous drop to a low‐viscosity drop, it is demonstrated that the splash of the low‐viscosity part of this Janus drop on superamphiphobic surfaces can be significantly promoted. The underlying mechanism is that the viscous stress exerted by the low‐viscosity component drives the viscous component moving in the opposite direction, enhancing the spreading of the low‐viscosity side and thereby its rim instability. The threshold velocity, above which splashing occurs, can be tuned by varying the viscosity ratio of the Janus drop. Moreover, the impact of the Janus drop can be employed to verify the mechanism of splash. When a single‐phase water drop impacts on a superamphiphobic surface, it symmetrically spreads and completely bounces off the surface. Surprisingly, by imposing a highly viscous drop to the water drop, the resulted Janus drop exhibits an asymmetric spreading and retracting phase, and the splashing of the water part is significantly promoted compared to the single‐phase water drop impact.

Light exhibits both spin and orbital angular momentum (SAM and OAM). These two forms of angular momentum remain independent in paraxial fields, but become coupled in confined fields through spin–orbit interactions (SOI). The SOI mechanism allows for the manipulation of SAM to generate structured light fields featuring nontrivial topological characteristics, such as optical skyrmions. Conventional OAM beams, nonetheless, carry discrete integer topological charges (TCs), leading to discrete SAM states. This discrete property poses a persistent challenge for achieving continuous control of SAM. To tackle this fundamental issue, we explored fractional orbital angular momentum (FOAM) beams, whose TCs are extended from integers to fractions, to realize continuous and precise control of SAM. A direct mathematical relationship between the fractional effective TCs of FOAM beams and the orientation distributions of the SAM vector has been derived. This theoretical prediction has been experimentally verified using our home-built near-field mapping system, by which the distinct SAM distributions of surface cosine waves regulated by FOAM beams were mapped out. As a potential application, we also devised an inverse detection method to accurately measure the fractional effective TCs of FOAM, which achieved theoretical and experimental accuracies of 10 and 10 , respectively. These advancements may enhance our fundamental understanding of the SOI mechanism, and hence could create novel opportunities for light field manipulation, optical communication, and other related areas.

Understanding the structures and reaction mechanisms of interfacial active sites in the Fisher-Tropsch synthesis reaction is highly desirable but challenging. Herein, we show that the ZrO -Ru interface could be engineered by loading the ZrO promoter onto silica-supported Ru nanoparticles (ZrRu/SiO ), achieving 7.6 times higher intrinsic activity and ~45% reduction in the apparent activation energy compared with the unpromoted Ru/SiO catalyst. Various characterizations and theoretical calculations reveal that the highly dispersed ZrO promoter strongly binds the Ru nanoparticles to form the Zr-O-Ru interfacial structure, which strengthens the hydrogen spillover effect and serves as a reservoir for active H species by forming Zr-OH* species. In particular, the formation of the Zr-O-Ru interface and presence of the hydroxyl species alter the H-assisted CO dissociation route from the formyl (HCO*) pathway to the hydroxy-methylidyne (COH*) pathway, significantly lowering the energy barrier of rate-limiting CO dissociation step and greatly increasing the reactivity. This investigation deepens our understanding of the metal-promoter interaction, and provides an effective strategy to design efficient industrial Fisher-Tropsch synthesis catalysts.

The membrane electrode assembly (MEA) is promising for practical applications of the electrocatalytic CO reduction reaction (CO RR) to multi-carbon (C ) compounds. Water management is crucial in the MEA electrolyser without catholyte, but few studies have clarified whether the co-feeding water in cathode can enhance C formation. Here, we report our discovery of pivotal roles of a suitable nanocomposite electrocatalyst with abundant Cu O-Cu interfaces in accomplishing water-promoting effect on C formation, achieving a current density of 1.0 A cm and a 19% single-pass C yield at 80% C Faradaic efficiency in MEA. The operando characterizations confirm the co-existence of Cu with Cu during CO RR at ampere-level current densities. Our studies reveal that Cu works for water activation and aids C‒C coupling by enhancing formations of adsorbed CO and CHO species. This work offers a strategy to boost CO RR to C compounds in industrial-relevant MEA by combining water management and electrocatalyst design.