Natural Cryoprotective and Cytoprotective Agents in Cryopreservation: A Focus on Melatonin

Cryoprotective and cytoprotective agents (Cytoprotective Agents) are fundamental components of the cryopreservation process. This review presents the essentials of the cryopreservation process by examining its drawbacks and the role of cytoprotective agents in protecting cell physiology. Natural cryoprotective and cytoprotective agents, such as antifreeze proteins, sugars and natural deep eutectic systems, have been compared with synthetic ones, addressing their mechanisms of action and efficacy of protection. The final part of this article focuses melatonin, a hormonal substance with antioxidant properties, and its emerging role as a cytoprotective agent for somatic cells and gametes, including ovarian tissue, spermatozoa and spermatogonial stem cells.     

Exploiting Free‐Energy Minima to Design Novel EphA2 Protein–Protein Antagonists: From Simulation to Experiment and Return

The free‐energy surface (FES) of protein–ligand binding contains information useful for drug design. Here we show how to exploit a free‐energy minimum of a protein‐ligand complex identified by metadynamics simulations to design a new EphA2 antagonist with improved inhibitory potency.     

Reproducibility of Biomolecular Corona Experiments: A Primer for Reliable Results

The biomolecular corona is a key component controlling the identity of nanomaterials in physiological environments. Studies aimed at identifying factors shaping the biomolecular corona have proliferated in the last decade but have been performed by research groups with different backgrounds. Efforts made within the scientific community to guarantee the reproducibility of experimental data have identified protocol standardization as an indispensable step for advancing knowledge in this arena. To contribute to fulfill this gap, here the relevance of interoperator variability in biomolecular corona studies and the benefits arising from automated systems usage are explored. Moreover, the role of molecular crowding during nanoparticle-biofluid incubation and the effect of washing the pellet during corona isolation are thoroughly investigated. It is believed that the findings will help researchers enhance the accuracy of experimental design and reporting.     

Birational aspects of the geometry of Varieties of Sums of Powers

Varieties of Sums of Powers describe the additive decompositions of a homogeneous polynomial into powers of linear forms. The study of these varieties dates back to Sylvester and Hilbert, but only few of them, for special degrees and number of variables, are concretely identified. In this paper we aim to understand a general birational behavior of VSP. To do this we birationally embed these varieties into Grassmannians and prove the rational connectedness of many VSP in arbitrary degrees and number of variables.     

Young Integrals and SPDEs

In this note, we study the non-linear evolution problem $dY_t = -A Y_t dt + B(Y_t) dX_t,$ where $XIn this note, we study the non-linear evolution problem where is a -H?lder continuous function of the time parameter, with values in a distribution space, and the generator of an analytical semigroup. Then, we will give some sharp conditions on in order to solve the above equation in a function space, first in the linear case (for any value of in ), and then when satisfies some Lipschitz type conditions (for ). The solution of the evolution problem will be understood in the mild sense, and the integrals involved in that definition will be of Young type.     

A Numerical Approach to Copolymers at Selective Interfaces

We consider a model of a random copolymer at a selective interface which undergoes a localization/delocalization transition. In spite of the several rigorous results available for this model, the theoretical characterization of the phase transition has remained elusive and there is still no agreement about several important issues, for example the behavior of the polymer near the phase transition line. From a rigorous viewpoint non coinciding upper and lower bounds on the critical line are known. In this paper we combine numerical computations with rigorous arguments to get to a better understanding of the phase diagram. Our main results include: