Facile hydrothermal growth graphene/ZnO nanocomposite for development of enhanced biosensor

Graphene/zinc oxide nanocomposite was synthesised via a facile, green and efficient approach consisted of novel liquid phase exfoliation and solvothermal growth for sensing application. Highly pristine graphene was synthesised through mild sonication treatment of graphite in a mixture of ethanol and water at an optimum ratio. The X-ray diffractometry (XRD) affirmed the hydrothermal growth of pure zinc oxide nanoparticles from zinc nitrate hexahydrate precursor. The as-prepared graphene/zinc oxide (G/ZnO) nanocomposite was characterised comprehensively to evaluate its morphology, crystallinity, composition and purity. All results clearly indicate that zinc oxide particles were homogenously distributed on graphene sheets, without any severe aggregation. The electrochemical performance of graphene/zinc oxide nanocomposite-modified screen-printed carbon electrode (SPCE) was evaluated using cyclic voltammetry (CV) and amperometry analysis. The resulting electrode exhibited excellent electrocatalytic activity towards the reduction of hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) in a linear range of 1–15 mM with a correlation coefficient of 0.9977. The sensitivity of the graphene/zinc oxide nanocomposite-modified hydrogen peroxide sensor was 3.2580 μAmM⁻¹ with a limit of detection of 7.4357 μM. An electrochemical DNA sensor platform was then fabricated for the detection of Avian Influenza H5 gene based on graphene/zinc oxide nanocomposite. The results obtained from amperometry study indicate that the graphene/zinc oxide nanocomposite-enhanced electrochemical DNA biosensor is significantly more sensitive (P < 0.05) and efficient than the conventional agarose gel electrophoresis.     

Recognition for avian influenza virus proteins based on support vector machine and linear discriminant analysis

Total 200 properties related to structural characteristics were employed to represent structures of 400 HA coded proteins of influenza virus as training samples. Some recognition models for HA proteins of avian influenza virus (AIV) were developed using support vector machine (SVM) and linear discriminant analysis (LDA). The results obtained from LDA are as follows: the identification accuracy (Ria) for training samples is 99.8% and Ria by leave one out cross validation is 99.5%. Both Ria of 99.8% for training samples and Ria of 99.3% by leave one out cross validation are obtained using SVM model, respectively. External 200 HA proteins of influenza virus were used to validate the external predictive power of the resulting model. The external Ria for them is 95.5% by LDA and 96.5% by SVM, respectively, which shows that HA proteins of AIVs are preferably recognized by SVM and LDA, and the performances by SVM are superior to those by LDA.     

Synthesis and specific influenza A virus‐adsorptive functionality of alkyl curdlan sulfate‐coated membrane filter

To develop a biomaterial with an influenza virus‐adsorptive functionality, an alkyl curdlan sulfate was prepared by ionic interaction between a positively charged didodecyldimethyl ammonium bromide and a negatively charged sulfate group of curdlan sulfate, which has potent anti‐HIV activity, and then it was coated on a membrane filter with a 1‐μm pore size by hydrophobic interaction with the long alkyl groups in the curdlan sulfate. The alkyl curdlan sulfate with the degree of alkylation (DOA) of 0.03 (one didodecyldimethyl group/12 sugar residues with 36 hydroxyl or sulfate groups) showed potent anti‐HIV activity in a 50% effective concentration (EC₅₀) as low as 0.87 μg/mL (standard curdlan sulfate EC₅₀ = 0.3 μg/mL), and the activity decreased with increasing DOA. A DOA higher than 0.1 (one didodecyldimethyl group/three sugar residues with nine hydroxyl or sulfate groups) gave no anti‐HIV activity. Although both curdlan sulfate and alkyl curdlan sulfates did not inhibited infection of Madin‐Darby canine kidney cells by influenza viruses, the alkyl curdlan sulfate‐coated membrane filter was found to have a specific adsorptive functionality for influenza A virus in vitro. When 1.6 mg of the alkyl curdlan sulfate with the DOA of 0.03 was coated on a membrane filter (φ13 mm; pore size, 1 μm), three stacked alkyl curdlan sulfate‐coated membrane filters dramatically decreased hemagglutination to 1/4–1/32. However, the membrane filter did not effectively remove on influenza B viruses, and thus a membrane filter without alkyl curdlan sulfate was not effective against influenza viruses. These results can therefore be presumed to demonstrate that the alkyl curdlan sulfate‐coated membrane filter removed influenza A viruses by adsorption between the negatively charged sulfate groups and the positively charged envelope protein of the virus. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem, 2011     

流行性感冒的微分方程模型及数据分析

流行性感冒作为一种传染病,至今仍然经常爆发,对人们正常的工作、生活造成严重影响.依据流感的传染方式及观测数据,通过建立常微分方程模型,可探讨流感的传播规律、影响它流行的因素、预测可能发生的流行及如何抑制其流行.     

甲型H1N1流感传染人数的灰色预测模型研究

就我国甲型H1N1流感传染人数的预测运用灰色系统理论建立了GM(1,1)模型和1阶残差修正模型GMε(1,1),并分别作了精度分析研究了GMε(1,1)的变化趋势,提出了临界值和有效域概念.用MATLAB确定了模型参数及模型预测值.     

Recognition of sialylated poly-N-acetyllactosamine chains on N- and O-linked glycans by human and avian influenza A virus hemagglutinins

Human influenza viruses are proposed to recognize sialic acids (pink diamonds) on glycans extended with poly-LacNAc chains (LacNAc=(yellow circle+blue square)). N- and O-linked glycans were extended with different poly-LacNAc chains with α2-3- and α2-6-linked sialic acids recognized by human and avian influenza viruses, respectively. The specificity of recombinant hemagglutinins (receptors in green) was investigated by using glycan microarray technology.     

检测禽流感H5亚型病毒的阻抗型免疫研究

研制了一种可用于H5亚型禽流感病毒快速检测的阻抗型免疫传感器。通过蛋白A将H5N1表面抗原血凝素(HA)的单克隆抗体固定于金叉指阵列微电极表面,并与待测溶液中的目标抗原H5N1进行免疫反应。在[Fe(CN)6]3"/4"溶液中进行电化学阻抗谱扫描,表征电极的表面修饰及抗原捕获过程。当H5N1病毒浓度在21～26 HA unit/50μL范围时,其浓度的对数值与叉指阵列微电极的电子传递阻抗的变化值呈线性关系,相关系数为0.9885;检出限为20 HA unit/50μL,检测时间为1 h。此传感器特异性好,灵敏度高,可以重复使用,在病原微生物快速检测领域具有良好的应用前景。     

Modelling the dynamics of avian influenza with nonlinear recovery rate and psychological effect

In this paper, a SI-SEIR type avian influenza epidemic model with psychological effect, nonlinear recovery rate and saturation inhibition effect is formulated to study the transmission and control of avian influenza virus. By setting the basic reproductive number as the threshold parameter and constructing Lyapunov function, Dulac function and using the Li-Muldowney''s geometry approach, we prove the local and global stability of disease-free equilibria and endemic equilibrium. Theoretical analysis are carried out to show the role of the saturation inhibition effect, psychological effect and effective medical resources in this model, and numerical simulations are also given to verify the results.     

Sensitivity of molecular docking to induced fit effects in influenza virus neuraminidase

Many proteins undergo small side chain or even backbone movements on binding of different ligands into the same protein structure. This is known as induced fit and is potentially problematic for virtual screening of databases against protein targets. In this report we investigate the limits of the rigid protein approximation used by the docking program, GOLD, through cross-docking using protein structures of influenza neuraminidase. Neuraminidase is known to exhibit small but significant induced fit effects on ligand binding. Some neuraminidase crystal structures caused concern due to the bound ligand conformation and GOLD performed poorly on these complexes. A `clean' set, which contained unique, unambiguous complexes, was defined. For this set, the lowest energy structure was correctly docked (i.e. RMSD < 1.5 Å away from the crystal reference structure) in 84% of proteins, and the most promiscuous protein (1mwe) was able to dock all 15 ligands accurately including those that normally required an induced fit movement. This is considerably better than the 70% success rate seen with GOLD against general validation sets. Inclusion of specific water molecules involved in water-mediated hydrogen bonds did not significantly improve the docking performance for ligands that formed water-mediated contacts but it did prevent docking of ligands that displaced these waters. Our data supports the use of a single protein structure for virtual screening with GOLD in some applications involving induced fit effects, although care must be taken to identify the protein structure that performs best against a wide variety of ligands. The performance of GOLD was significantly better than the GOLD implementation of ChemScore and the reasons for this are discussed. Overall, GOLD has shown itself to be an extremely good, robust docking program for this system.