能带反折叠方法研究进展

基于密度泛函理论的第一性原理方法已经成为人们研究材料结构、性质以及进行新功能材 料设计的重要手段。对于掺杂和界面体系，人们常常需要使用超胞来描述。超胞的使用导致能带 折叠，从而掩盖能带结构的重要特征，为人们分析掺杂和界面效应对材料能带结构的影响带来困 难。本文概述了超胞导致的能带折叠现象，重点介绍了基于平面波和原子轨道的能带反折叠方法、 声子能带反折叠方法及相关计算工具，给出了该方法在掺杂和界面体系电子、声子能带结构方面 应用的例子，并对该方法进行了展望。     

Amyloid-Like Assembly to Form Film at Interfaces: Structural Transformation and Application

Protein-based biomaterials are attracting broad interest for their remarkable structural and functional properties. Disturbing the native protein's three-dimensional structural stability in vitro and controlling subsequent aggregation is an effective strategy to design and construct protein-based biomaterials. One of the recent developments in regulating protein structural transformation to ordered aggregation is amyloid assembly, which generates fibril-based 1D to 3D nanostructures as functional materials. Especially, the amyloid-like assembly to form films at interfaces has been reported, which is induced by the effective reduction of the intramolecular disulfide bond. The main contribution of this amyloid-like assembly is the large-scale formation of protein films at interfaces and excellent adhesion to target substrates. This review presents the research progress of the amyloid-like assembly to form films and related applications and thereby provides a guide to exploiting protein-based biomaterials.     

Use of a solid-state nanopore for profiling the transferrin receptor protein and distinguishing between transferrin receptor and its ligand protein

A nanopore device is capable of providing single-molecule level information of an analyte as they translocate through the sensing aperture—a nanometer-sized through-hole—under the influence of an applied electric field. In this study, a silicon nitride (Si_xN_y)-based nanopore was used to characterize the human serum transferrin receptor protein (TfR) under various applied voltages. The presence of dimeric forms of TfR was found to decrease exponentially as the applied electric field increased. Further analysis of monomeric TfR also revealed that its unfolding behaviors were positively dependent on the applied voltage. Furthermore, a comparison between the data of monomeric TfR and its ligand protein, human serum transferrin (hSTf), showed that these two protein populations, despite their nearly identical molecular weights, could be distinguished from each other by means of a solid-state nanopore (SSN). Lastly, the excluded volumes of TfR were experimentally determined at each voltage and were found to be within error of their theoretical values. The results herein demonstrate the successful application of an SSN for accurately classifying monomeric and dimeric molecules while the two populations coexist in a heterogeneous mixture.