DNA-modified electrodes (VII)

Two kinds of DNA-modified electrodes were prepared by covalent and adsorptive immobilization of DNA onto self-assembled monolayers of 2, 2’-dithiodiethanol on gold electrodes and characterized by cyclic voltammetry, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and scanning tunneling microscopy. The results suggest that the methods are satisfactory for the immobilization of DNA on electrodes. Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 39370213; 39770220; 29773034), State Key Laboratory for Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces (Xiamen University), and Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province (Grant NO. 96J037).     

Identification of metabolites of Danggui Buxue Tang in rat urine by liquid chromatography coupled with electrospray ionization time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry

A method coupling liquid chromatography with electrospray ionization time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry (LC/ESI‐TOF/MS) has been developed for rapid and sensitive analysis of rat urinary metabolite profile of Danggui Buxue Tang (DBT), a well‐known Chinese herbal formula. After oral administration of DBT, urine samples were collected during 0–24 h, and then pretreated by solid‐phase extraction. A total of 68 compounds including 13 parent compounds and 55 metabolites were detected in the drug‐containing urines compared with blank urines. The total analytical time was less than 20 min. Metabolites of DBT were identified using dynamic adjustment of the fragmentor voltage to produce structure‐relevant fragment ions. By using this approach, the mass accuracy of precursor and fragment ions was typically within ±5 ppm of the theoretical values, and enabled the identification of 43 metabolites including 27 isoflavanoid and 16 phthalide metabolites. Our results indicated that glucuronidation and sulfation were the major metabolic pathways of isoflavonoids, while glutathione conjugation, glucuronidation and sulfation were the main metabolic pathways of phthalides. No saponin‐related metabolites were detected. The results of the present study provided important structural information relating to the metabolism of DBT. Furthermore, this work demonstrated the potential of the LC/ESI‐TOF/MS approach for identification of metabolites from Chinese herbal medicines in urine. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Convexity control and approximation properties of interpolating curves

A constrained rational cubic spline with linear denominator was constructed in [1]. In the present paper, the sufficient condition for convex interpolation and some properties in error estimation are given.     

Multi-Channel Optical Device for Solar-Driven Bacterial Inactivation under Real-Time Temperature Feedback

Solar-driven photothermal antibacterial devices have attracted a lot of interest due to the fact that solar energy is one of the cleanest sources of energy in the world. However, conventional materials have a narrow absorbance band, resulting in deficient solar harvesting. In addition, lack of knowledge on temperature change in these devices during the photothermal process has also led to a waste of energy. Here, we presented an elegant multi-channel optical device with a multilayer structure to simultaneously address the above-mentioned issues in solar-driven antibacterial devices. In the photothermal channel, semiconductor IrO₂-nanoaggregates exhibited higher solar absorbance and photothermal conversion efficiency compared with nanoparticles. In the luminescence channel, thermal-sensitive Er-doped upconversion nanoparticles were utilized to reflect the microscale temperature in real-time. The bacteria were successfully inactivated during the photothermal effect under solar irradiation with temperature monitoring. This study could provide valuable insight for the development of smart photothermal devices for solar-driven photothermal bacterial inactivation in the future.     

Time operator in QFT with Virasoro constraints

Time operator is studied on the basis of field quantization, where the difficulty stemming from Pauli?s theorem is circumvented by borrowing ideas from the covariant quantization of the bosonic string, i.e., one can remove the negative energy states by imposing Virasoro constraints. Applying the index theorem, one can show that in a different subspace of a Fock space, there is a different self-adjoint time operator. However, the self-adjoint time operator in the maximal subspace of the Fock space can also represent the self-adjoint time operator in the other subspaces, such that it can be taken as the single, universal time operator. Furthermore, a new insight on Pauli?s theorem is presented.     

中药地龙提取液的促成骨作用及对实验性牙槽骨吸收疗效的研究

探讨了中药地龙水提液和醇提液有无促进成骨细胞增殖、分化和基质矿化的作用及对大鼠牙槽骨吸收疗效进行了研究.制备地龙的水相及醇相提取液,以小鼠成骨细胞株MC3T3-E1作为体外药效的试验模型,分别通过MTT法,流式细胞术,碱性磷酸酶活性测定,骨钙素检测和Von kossa基质矿化染色法观察上述药物的促细胞增殖、分化、基质矿化作用.以实验牙位龈正中注射脂多糖建立的SD大鼠实验性牙槽骨吸收作为体内药效试验模型,通过组织切片形态学骨密度观察和抗酒石酸酸性磷酸酶染色评价上述药物对大鼠实验性牙槽骨吸收的疗效.结果发现:1 mg·L-1 水提液,0.01 mg·L-1 和1 mg*L-1醇提液能显著促进MC3T3-E1细胞增殖.各浓度的水提液和醇提液均能使S期细胞百分率升高,G1期细胞百分率减少.0.01 mg*L-1水提液和1 mg·L-1 醇提液作用于细胞的第1～3 d内、100 mg·L-1醇提液作用第7～9 d内、100 mg·L-1水提液作用第10～12 d内可显著提高细胞骨钙素合成和分泌.0.01 mg·L-1水提液和醇提液,1 mg·L-1水提液可显著促进细胞体外基质矿化.地龙水提液和醇提液组的骨密度均有显著增高,破骨细胞数显著降低.阴性对照组至第30 d时牙槽骨仍可见大量破骨细胞.结果表明:地龙水相和醇相提取物中均存在较高活性的促成骨细胞增殖、分化和基质矿化的物质,且对实验性牙槽骨吸收模型有一定治疗作用,可抑制其牙槽骨吸收,促进成骨活动使其修复重建.     

Double Modification of Electrode Surface for the Selective Detection of Epinephrine and Its Application to Flow Injection Amperometric Analysis

A glassy carbon electrode having two polymer layers has been applied to selectively detect epinephrine. The inner layer formed by electropolymerization of macrocyclic nickel complex functioned as an electrocatalyst for epinephrine oxidation and the outer layer composed of hydrolyzed polyurethane γ‐benzyl L ‐glutamate as a screening layer. Differential pulse voltammetry showed almost 100% recovery of epinephrine even in 100‐fold excess of interferents. When applied to a dual glassy carbon electrode as an amperometric detector in flow injection analysis, a linear response over 0.1 μM and 10 μM was obtained. Recovery tested for 5‐fold diluted human urine samples was 97.5%.     

Novel designed polymer–acyclovir conjugates with linker‐controlled drug release and hepatoma cell targeting

To develop designed polymer–drug conjugates, where the rate of drug liberation and hepatoma cell targeting function could be rationally and widely controlled, we facilely synthesized a series of novel, galactose‐functionalized polymer–acyclovir conjugates with different linkers and first reported the effect of the linker structure including the type of acyclovir‐linked bond (an ester bond or an amide bond) and relative length of the linker between acyclovir and the polymer main chain on release rate and targeting ability of conjugates. In vitro release studies showed that the cumulative released acyclovir from these polymer–acyclovir conjugates was between 24 and 65% in pH 1.2 glycine solution after 7 days. The ester bond more easily underwent hydrolysis than the amide bond. The longer the relative linker length was, the faster the acyclovir was released. The cell recognition experiments visualized using confocal laser scanning microscopy exhibited that the resultant galactose‐functionalized polymer–acyclovir conjugates had evident targeting to hepG2 cells, and targeting ability was also in connection with the relative length of linker. By choosing appropriate linker, cellular internalization of acyclovir could be well achieved. We consider these results to be helpful for the design of multifunctional polymeric prodrugs, in which the required release rate and targeting ability could be rationally controlled by predetermined molecular architecture. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 46: 117–126, 2008