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The spontaneous self-assembly of multicellular ensembles into living materials with synergistic structure and function remains a considerable challenge in biotechnology and synthetic biology. Here, we exploit the aqueous two-phase separation of dextran-in-PEG emulsion micro-droplets for the capture, spatial organization and immobilization of algal cells or algal/bacterial cell communities to produce discrete multicellular spheroids capable of both aerobic (oxygen producing) and hypoxic (hydrogen producing) photosynthesis in daylight under air. We show that localized oxygen depletion results in hydrogen production from the core of the algal microscale reactor, and demonstrate that enhanced levels of hydrogen evolution can be achieved synergistically by spontaneously enclosing the photosynthetic cells within a shell of bacterial cells undergoing aerobic respiration. Our results highlight a promising droplet-based environmentally benign approach to dispersible photosynthetic microbial micro-reactors comprising segregated cellular micro-niches with dual functionality, and provide a step towards photobiological hydrogen production under aerobic conditions. The development of techniques capable of orchestrating the assembly of living cells into multicellular ensembles with synergistic and function is challenge. Here, the authors construct algal or algal/bacterial cells-based core shell-like structure based on aqueous two-phase system for synergic photosynthetic H 2 production.

This paper investigates the boundedness of multiplication operators Mψ between natural μ-Bloch-type spaces Bμ,nat(BX) (or their little μ-Bloch counterparts) and natural ω-Bloch-type spaces Bω,nat(BX) on the unit ball BX of a complex Banach space X. We establish complete characterizations for the boundedness of Mψ under varying conditions on the weight functions μ and ω, including specific cases such as logarithmic and power-weighted Bloch spaces. The results extend classical operator theory to infinite-dimensional settings, unifying prior work on finite-dimensional domains.

The membrane-associated RING-CH (MARCH) proteins are E3 ligases that regulate the stability of various cellular membrane proteins. MARCH8 has been reported to inhibit the infection of HIV-1 and a few other viruses, thus plays an important role in host antiviral defense. However, the antiviral spectrum and the underlying mechanisms of MARCH8 are incompletely defined. Here, we demonstrate that MARCH8 profoundly inhibits influenza A virus (IAV) replication both in vitro and in mice. Mechanistically, MARCH8 suppresses IAV release through redirecting viral M2 protein from the plasma membrane to lysosomes for degradation. Specifically, MARCH8 catalyzes the K63-linked polyubiquitination of M2 at lysine residue 78 (K78). A recombinant A/Puerto Rico/8/34 virus carrying the K78R M2 protein shows greater replication and more severe pathogenicity in cells and mice. More importantly, we found that the M2 protein of the H1N1 IAV has evolved to acquire non-lysine amino acids at positions 78/79 to resist MARCH8-mediated ubiquitination and degradation. Together, our data support the important role of MARCH8 in host anti-IAV intrinsic immune defense by targeting M2, and suggest the inhibitory pressure of MARCH8 on H1N1 IAV transmission in the human population. The membrane-associated RING-CH (MARCH) proteins are E3 ligases regulating stability of plasma membrane (PM) proteins. Here, Liu et al. show that MARCH8 suppresses Influenza A virus infection in vitro and in vivo through redirecting M2 protein from the PM to lysosomes for degradation.

The engineering and modulation of living micro-organisms is a key challenge in green bio-manufacturing for the development of sustainable and carbon-neutral energy technologies. Here, we develop a cellular bionic approach in which living algal cells are interfaced with an ultra-thin shell of a conductive polymer along with a calcium carbonate exoskeleton to produce a discrete cellular micro-niche capable of sustained photosynthetic and photosynthetic-independent hydrogen production. The surface-augmented algal cells induce oxygen depletion, conduct photo-induced extracellular electrons, and provide structural and chemical stability that collectively give rise to localized hypoxic conditions and concomitant hydrogenase activity under daylight in air. We show that assembly of the living cellular micro-niche opens a direct extracellular photoelectron pathway to hydrogenase resulting in photosynthesis-independent hydrogen evolution for 200 d. In addition, surface-conductive dead algal cells continue to produce hydrogen for up to 8 d due to their structural stability and retention of functional hydrogenases. Overall, the integration of artificial biological hydrogen production pathways and natural photosynthesis in surface-augmented algal cells provides a cellular bionic approach to enhanced green hydrogen production under environmentally benign conditions and could pave the way to new opportunities in sustainable energy production. Low rate and limited duration are major challenges in photobiological hydrogen production. Here, the authors coat algal cells with a concentrically arranged shell comprising an ultra-thin Fe(III)-doped polypyrrole inner layer and outer exoskeleton of CaCO 3 , and achieve sustainable H2 production for over 200 days.

Doxorubicin (DOX) is an anthracycline antibiotic that is used extensively for the management of carcinoma; however, its clinical application is limited due to its serious cardiotoxic side effects. Ferroptosis represents iron-dependent and reactive oxygen species (ROS)-related cell death and has been proven to contribute to the progression of DOX-induced cardiomyopathy. Fisetin is a natural flavonoid that is abundantly present in fruits and vegetables. It has been reported to exert cardioprotective effects against DOX-induced cardiotoxicity in experimental rats. However, the underlying mechanisms remain unknown. The present study investigated the cardioprotective role of fisetin and the underlying molecular mechanism through experiments in the DOX-induced cardiomyopathy rat and H9c2 cell models. The results revealed that fisetin treatment could markedly abate DOX-induced cardiotoxicity by alleviating cardiac dysfunction, ameliorating myocardial fibrosis, mitigating cardiac hypertrophy in rats, and attenuating ferroptosis of cardiomyocytes by reversing the decline in the GPX4 level. Mechanistically, fisetin exerted its antioxidant effect by reducing the MDA and lipid ROS levels and increasing the glutathione (GSH) level. Moreover, fisetin exerted its protective effect by increasing the SIRT1 expression and the Nrf2 mRNA and protein levels and its nuclear translocation, which resulted in the activation of its downstream genes such as HO-1 and FTH1 . Selective inhibition of SIRT1 attenuated the protective effects of fisetin in the H9c2 cells, which in turn decreased the GSH and GPX4 levels, as well as Nrf2 , HO-1 , and FTH1 expressions. In conclusion, fisetin exerts its therapeutic effects against DOX-induced cardiomyopathy by inhibiting ferroptosis via SIRT1/Nrf2 signaling pathway activation.

Towards intracellular engineering of living organisms, the development of new biocompatible polymerization system applicable for an intrinsically non-natural macromolecules synthesis for modulating living organism function/behavior is a key step. Herein, we find that the tyrosine residues in the cofactor-free proteins can be employed to mediate controlled radical polymerization under 405 nm light. A proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET) mechanism between the excited-state TyrOH* residue in proteins and the monomer or the chain transfer agent is confirmed. By using Tyr-containing proteins, a wide range of well-defined polymers are successfully generated. Especially, the developed photopolymerization system shows good biocompatibility, which can achieve in-situ extracellular polymerization from the surface of yeast cells for agglutination/anti-agglutination functional manipulation or intracellular polymerization inside yeast cells, respectively. Besides providing a universal aqueous photopolymerization system, this study should contribute a new way to generate various non-natural polymers in vitro or in vivo to engineer living organism functions and behaviours. Developing a biocompatible polymerization system applicable for the synthesis of intrinsically non-natural polymers is a key step towards intracellular engineering of living organism. Here the authors report tyrosine residues-mediated radical photopolymerizations for intracellular synthesis of non-natural macromolecules

With the rapid advancement of Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies, the application of NLP to enable intelligent syndrome differentiation in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has become a popular research focus. However, TCM texts contain numerous obscure characters and specialized terminologies, which existing methods struggle to effectively extract, leading to lower accuracy in syndrome differentiation. To address this, we propose a dual-channel knowledge-attention model for TCM syndrome differentiation. The model utilizes the ZY-BERT, a large pre-trained model in the TCM domain, to extract vector representations of TCM texts. A dual-channel network, comprising an improved Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network, is employed to capture both critical local information and global patterns in TCM texts. Additionally, an attention mechanism is introduced to enhance the model’s ability to learn syndrome-related knowledge, integrating syndrome definition knowledge to improve the model’s ability to differentiate complex syndromes. Experiments conducted on a publicly available TCM syndrome differentiation dataset demonstrate that the proposed model achieves an accuracy of 84.01%, representing an 1.75% improvement in accuracy compared to the best baseline model.

The Beijing-Tianjin Sandstorm Source Region (BTSSR), a region with significant vegetation degradation in China, has been subjected to ecological engineering intended to curb vegetation browning. Nevertheless, few studies have used multisource data to quantitatively evaluate the vegetation restoration effectiveness in the BTSSR, and the relationship between ecological engineering and vegetation restoration effectiveness in this region from statistical evidence has received little attention so far. Here, we employed the comprehensive vegetation parameters to describe the vegetation restoration effectiveness, and examined the driving mechanism of natural and human factors in different sub regions. First, we evaluated the vegetation restoration effectiveness in the BTSSR using an index that combined Fractional Vegetation Coverage (FVC) and Net Primary Productivity (NPP). Our results showed that the vegetation restoration effectiveness has significantly increased over time. From 2000 to 2020, 60.9% of the area achieved significant vegetation restoration, and the area with higher vegetation restoration effectiveness was concentrated in the southern part of the study area. Then, we used the Geodetector Model to explore the main factors and their interactions affecting vegetation restoration effectiveness. We found that the vegetation restoration effectiveness in the entire area was dominated by annual precipitation, in the northern part of the study area was led by climate, and in the southern part of the study area was dominated by ecological engineering. We further demonstrated that the interaction between ecological engineering and climate, soil conditions, geographical background and socioeconomic had the synergistic effect on vegetation restoration effectiveness, and the interaction between ecological engineering and annual precipitation had the greatest impact. We recommend that the northern region of the BTSSR continue to build low-density wind and sand control forests, while the southern region needs to be strengthened to prevent soil erosion problems caused by the expansion of human activities.

Respiratory muscle ultrasound is a widely available, highly feasible technique that can be used to study the contribution of the individual respiratory muscles related to respiratory dysfunction. Stroke disrupts multiple functions, and the respiratory function is often significantly decreased in stroke patients. A search of the MEDLINE, Web of Science, and PubMed databases was conducted. We identified studies measuring respiratory muscles in healthy and patients by ultrasonography. Two reviewers independently extracted and documented data regarding to the criteria. Data were extracted including participant demographics, ultrasonography evaluation protocol, subject population, reference values, etc. A total of 1954 participants from 39 studies were included. Among them, there were 1,135 participants from 19 studies on diaphragm, 259 participants from 6 studies on extra-diaphragmatic inspiratory muscles, and 560 participants from 14 studies on abdominal expiratory muscles. The ultrasonic evaluation of diaphragm and abdominal expiratory muscle thickness had a relatively typically approach, while, extra-diaphragmatic inspiratory muscles were mainly used in ICU that lack of a consistent paradigm. Diaphragm and expiratory muscle ultrasound has been widely used in the assessment of respiratory muscle function. On the contrary, there is not enough evidence to assess extra-diaphragmatic inspiratory muscles by ultrasound. In addition, the thickness of the diaphragm on the hemiplegic side was lower than that on the non-hemiplegic side in stroke patients. For internal oblique muscle (IO), rectus abdominis muscle (RA), transversus abdominis muscle (TrA), and external oblique muscle (EO), most studies showed that the thickness on the hemiplegic side was lower than that on the non-hemiplegic side. : The protocol of this review was registered in the PROSPERO database (CRD42022352901).

The dynamic study of coacervates in vitro contributes our understanding of phase separation mechanisms in cells due to complex intracellular physiology. However, current researches mainly involve the use of exogenous auxiliary agents to form multi-compartmental coacervates with short-term stability. Herein, we report the endogenous self-organizing of multi-component coacervates (HA/PDDA/BSA/DMAEMA) induced by a dynamic stimulation process of protein-mediated photopolymerization. As polymerization proceeds, the cycled structural evolution and maturation from coacervate droplets into multi-compartmental coacervates, coacervate vesicles and coacervate droplets are revealed, which are driven by electrostatic interaction and osmotic pressure difference supported by dynamic and thermodynamic control. Specially, by regulating the light stimulation time, a type of multi-compartmental coacervates can be widely obtained with high structural stability over 300 days. Being a promising artificial cell model, it shows the special characteristic of compartmentalized encapsulation of substrates, efficiently improving enzymatic interfacial catalytic efficiency of organelle-like communication. Our study holds great potential for advancing the understanding of the structural evolution mechanism of membraneless organelles and provides an instructive technique for constructing multi-compartmental coacervates with long-term stability. Coacervate dynamics are studied to aid in understanding of phase separation cells, but obtaining sufficient stability can be challenging. Here, the authors report the development of multi-component coacervates that self-organise by protein mediated photopolymerisation, and are stable for over 300 days.