Bioprinting of Collagen: Considerations,Potentials, and Applications

Collagen is the most abundant extracellular matrix protein that is widely used in tissue engineering (TE). There is little research done on printing pure collagen. To understand the bottlenecks in printing pure collagen, it is imperative to understand collagen from a bottom‐up approach. Here it is aimed to provide a comprehensive overview of collagen printing, where collagen assembly in vivo and the various sources of collagen available for TE application are first understood. Next, the current printing technologies and strategy for printing collagen‐based materials are highlighted. Considerations and key challenges faced in collagen printing are identified. Finally, the key research areas that would enhance the functionality of printed collagen are presented.     

DANGLE: A Bayesian inferential method for predicting protein backbone dihedral angles and secondary structure

This paper introduces DANGLE, a new algorithm that employs Bayesian inference to estimate the likelihood of all possible values of the backbone dihedral angles ? and ψ for each residue in a query protein, based on observed chemical shifts and the conformational preferences of each amino acid type. The method provides robust estimates of ? and ψ within realistic boundary ranges, an indication of the degeneracy in the relationship between shift measurements and conformation at each site, and faithful secondary structure state assignments. When a simple degeneracy-based filtering procedure is applied, DANGLE offers an ideal compromise between accuracy and coverage when compared with other shift-based dihedral angle prediction methods. In addition, per residue analysis of shift/structure degeneracy has potential to be a useful new approach for studying the properties of unfolded proteins, with sufficient sensitivity to identify regions of residual structure in the acid denatured state of apomyoglobin.     

Iron‐Catalyzed 1,2‐Addition of Perfluoroalkyl Iodides to Alkynes and Alkenes

Iron catalysis has been developed for the intermolecular 1,2‐addition of perfluoroalkyl iodides to alkynes and alkenes. The catalysis has a wide substrate scope and high functional‐group tolerance. A variety of perfluoroalkyl iodides including CF₃I can be employed. The resulting perfluoroalkylated alkyl and alkenyl iodides can be further functionalized by cross‐coupling reactions. This methodology provides a straightforward and streamlined access to perfluoroalkylated organic molecules.     

Solvation Rule for Solid‐Electrolyte Interphase Enabler in Lithium‐Metal Batteries

Despite the exceptionally high energy density of lithium metal anodes, the practical application of lithium‐metal batteries (LMBs) is still impeded by the instability of the interphase between the lithium metal and the electrolyte. To formulate a functional electrolyte system that can stabilize the lithium‐metal anode, the solvation behavior of the solvent molecules must be understood because the electrochemical properties of a solvent can be heavily influenced by its solvation status. We unambiguously demonstrated the solvation rule for the solid‐electrolyte interphase (SEI) enabler in an electrolyte system. In this study, fluoroethylene carbonate was used as the SEI enabler due to its ability to form a robust SEI on the lithium metal surface, allowing relatively stable LMB cycling. The results revealed that the solvation number of fluoroethylene carbonate must be ≥1 to ensure the formation of a stable SEI in which the sacrificial reduction of the SEI enabler subsequently leads to the stable cycling of LMBs.     

Understanding energetic disorder in electron-deficient-core-based non-fullerene solar cells

Recent advances in material design for organic solar cells(OSCs) are primarily focused on developing near-infrared nonfullerene acceptors, typically A-DA′D-A type acceptors(where A abbreviates an electron-withdrawing moiety and D, an electron-donor moiety), to achieve high external quantum efficiency while maintaining low voltage loss. However, the charge transport is still constrained by unfavorable molecular conformations, resulting in high energetic disorder and limiting the device performance. Here, a facile design strategy is reported by introducing the "wing"(alkyl chains) at the terminal of the DA′D central core of the A-DA′D-A type acceptor to achieve a favorable and ordered molecular orientation and therefore facilitate charge carrier transport. Benefitting from the reduced disorder, the electron mobilities could be significantly enhanced for the"wing"-containing molecules. By carefully changing the length of alkyl chains, the mobility of acceptor has been tuned to match with that of donor, leading to a minimized charge imbalance factor and a high fill factor(FF). We further provide useful design strategies for highly efficient OSCs with high FF.     

Dynamics of scalar fields in an expanding/contracting cosmos at finite temperature

This study extends the investigation of quantum dissipative effects of a cosmological scalar field by taking into account cosmic expansion and contraction.Cheung,Drewes,Kang,and Kim calculated the effective action and quantum dissipative effects of a cosmological scalar field in a recent work,where analytical expressions for the effective potential and damping coefficient were presented using a simple scalar model with quartic interactions,and the work was conducted using Minkowski-space propagators in loop diagrams.In this work,we incorporate the Hubble expansion and contraction of the cosmic background and focus on the thermal dynamics of a scalar field in a regime where the effective potential changes slowly.Given that the Hubble parameter,H,attains a small but non-zero value,we carry out calculations to the first order in H.If we set H=0,all results match those in flat spacetime.Interestingly,we must integrate over the resonances,which in turn leads to an amplification of the effects of a non-zero H.This is an intriguing phenomenon,which cannot be uncovered in flat spacetime.The implications on particle creations in the early universe will be studied in a forthcoming study.     

STRUCTURE, MOLECULAR WEIGHT AND BIOACTIVITIES OF (1→3)-β-D- GLUCANS AND ITS SULFATED DERIVATIVES FROM FOUR KINDS OF LENTINUS EDODES

Lentinan samples, (1→3)-β-D-glucans containing 4.6-15.2 wt% proteins, coded as L-I1, L-I2, L-I3 and L-I4 (L-I)were isolated from four kinds of Lentinus edodes. These glucans were treated with acetone to remove the protein in order to obtain free protein glucans coded as LNP-I1, LNP-I2, LNP-I3 and LNP-I4 (LNP-I). The free-protein polysaccharides were sulfated to give derivatives (S-LNP-I) with degree of substitution (DS) from 0.4-0.8. The structural features and weight- average molecular weight (Mw) of the samples were investigated by using infrared spectroscopy, elemental analysis,13C-NMR, size exclusion chromatography combined with laser light scattering (SEC-LLS) and viscometry. The effects of structure and conformation of the polysaccharides on antitumor activities were assayed in vivo (Sarcoma 180 solid tumors)and in vitro (Sarcoma 180, HL-60, MCF-7 and Vero tumors). The results indicated that the predominant species of the samples L-I and LNP-I in 0.2 mol/L NaCl aqueous solution existed as triple-helical chains with high rigidity and in dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) as single-flexible chains. Interestingly, the antitumor activities of LNP-I are lower than those of the native glucans (L-I), whereas their sulfated derivatives have higher inhibition ratio against Sarcoma 180 than LNP-I. The results reveal that the binding of protein, sulfated modification and the triple helix conformation are important factors in the enhancement of the antitumor activities of polysaccharides on the whole.