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The photocatalytic oxidation of alcohols to value-added chemicals with simultaneous hydrogen (H 2 ) generation is a promising sustainable process that suffers from slow charge transfer and poor integration of both reactions. Here, an NH 2 -containing Ni metal-organic framework (MOF) is used as a precursor for creating N-doped C layer encapsulated nickel phosphide (NiP x @NC), which effectively enhances the charge transfer and reaction coupling when modified on narrow-band-gap Ag-In-Zn-S quantum dots (AIZS QDs). The resulting AIZS/NiP x @NC photocatalysts demonstrate high efficiency for benzyl alcohol (BA) oxidation coupled H 2 evolution, achieving H 2 /benzaldehyde production rates of 9.66/5.67 mmol g -1 h -1 , which are 3.30 and 47.25 times higher than those of pure AIZS QDs, respectively. Additionally, the selectivity of benzaldehyde is enhanced to 77.96%. AIZS/NiP x @NC also shows improved performance for other organics, including 4-methoxybenzyl alcohol and biomass-derived furfuryl alcohol. Photoelectrochemical and transient photovoltage spectroscopy tests confirm the increased effective surface charges and charge transfer efficiency, while electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy reveals a carbon-centered radical pathway for selective benzaldehyde formation. DFT calculations suggest that the N-doped carbon enhances the proton adsorption on Ni sites and BA adsorption on the NiP x @NC surface. This work highlights the potential of multifunction integration in developing carbon-based cocatalysts for photocatalytic alcohol oxidation coupled H 2 evolution.

A series of 3,7 a -diazacyclohepta[ jk ]fluorene derivatives were synthesized via a gold(I)-catalyzed 6- exo - dig hydroamination/7- endo - dig cycloisomerization domino method. The method exhibits a broad substrate scope, and a plausible mechanism has been proposed. The efficacy of this strategy is further validated by the successful derivatization of 3,7 a -diazacyclohepta[ jk ]fluorene.

A gold-catalyzed oxidative rearrangement of propargyl alcohols, derived from commercially available cyclohex-2-en-1-ones and alkynes, was successfully developed for the efficient synthesis of seven-membered rings. Thorough investigations were conducted to optimize the reaction conditions and evaluate its compatibility with various functional groups. Additionally, this methodology was applied to the formal total synthesis of guanacastepene A, demonstrating its practical utility in complex natural product synthesis. This versatile and efficient approach opens up new possibilities for the construction of diverse seven-membered ring systems, providing valuable building blocks for further exploration in drug discovery and the synthesis of intricate molecules.

The structural identification and efficient synthesis of bioactive 2,6-dideoxyglycosides are daunting challenges. Here, we report the total synthesis and structural revision of a series of 2,6-dideoxyglycosides from folk medicinal plants Ecdysanthera rosea and Chonemorpha megacalyx , which feature pregnane steroidal aglycones bearing an 18,20-lactone and glycans consisting of 2,6-dideoxy-3- O -methyl-β-pyranose residues, including ecdysosides A, B, and F and ecdysantheroside A. All the eight possible 2,6-dideoxy-3- O -methyl-β-pyranoside stereoisomers (of the proposed ecdysantheroside A) have been synthesized that testify the effective gold(I)-catalyzed glycosylation methods for the synthesis of various 2-deoxy-β-pyranosidic linkages and lays a foundation via nuclear magnetic resonance data mapping to identify these sugar units which occur promiscuously in the present and other natural glycosides. Moreover, some synthetic natural compounds and their isomers have shown promising anticancer, immunosuppressive, anti-inflammatory, and anti-Zika virus activities.

A gold(I)-catalyzed hydroamination/cycloisomerization cascade reaction was developed to yield indolizino[8,7- b ]indole and indolo[2,3- a ]-quinolizine derivatives from 2-ethynyltryptamides. The optimal conditions were determined by condition screening, and the functional group tolerances of these reactions were explored based on synthetic substrates. An insight into the explanation on the selectivity of the ring closure was obtained by density functional theory calculations. A plausible mechanism for the cascade reactions was proposed. Derivatization of the indolizino[8,7- b ]indole and total synthesis of nauclefidine demonstrated the practicality of this strategy.

Computational methods have been established as cornerstones in optical imaging and holography in recent years. Every year, the dependence of optical imaging and holography on computational methods is increasing significantly to the extent that optical methods and components are being completely and efficiently replaced with computational methods at low cost. This roadmap reviews the current scenario in four major areas namely incoherent digital holography, quantitative phase imaging, imaging through scattering layers, and super-resolution imaging. In addition to registering the perspectives of the modern-day architects of the above research areas, the roadmap also reports some of the latest studies on the topic. Computational codes and pseudocodes are presented for computational methods in a plug-and-play fashion for readers to not only read and understand but also practice the latest algorithms with their data. We believe that this roadmap will be a valuable tool for analyzing the current trends in computational methods to predict and prepare the future of computational methods in optical imaging and holography., Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00340-024-08280-3., Competing Interests: Conflict of interestThe authors declare no competing interests., (© The Author(s) 2024.)

Spiro[indoline-3,3 ' -pyrrolidine] and spiro[indoline-3,3 ' -piperidine] derivatives were synthesized in a substitution-controlled manner under the catalysis of cationic gold(I) species in the presence of Hantzsch ester (HEH). The optimal reaction condition was determined by screening, and the functional group tolerances of these two pathways were examined by readily synthetic substrates. The endo and exo selectivities of these cyclizations were elucidated by density functional theory calculations, and a plausible mechanism for these transformations was proposed.

Density functional theory calculations were applied to predict the pathways of gold(I)-catalyzed cycloisomerization of the indole substrates with 1,6-enynes, which were consistent with the ensuing experimental results. The substitution-controlled synthesis led to the formation of 1 H -pyrido[4,3- b ]indole and spiro[indoline-3,3'-pyridine] derivatives in a tunable way. The reactions had good functional group tolerances, and a possible mechanism was proposed based on the computational and experimental results.

Transport-of-intensity diffraction tomography (TIDT) is a recently developed label-free computational microscopy technique that retrieves high-resolution three-dimensional (3D) refractive index (RI) distribution of biological specimens from 3D intensity-only measurements. However, the non-interferometric synthetic aperture in TIDT is generally achieved sequentially through the acquisition of a large number of through-focus intensity stacks captured at different illumination angles, resulting in a very cumbersome and redundant data acquisition process. To this end, we present a parallel implementation of a synthetic aperture in TIDT (PSA-TIDT) with annular illumination. We found that the matched annular illumination provides a mirror-symmetric 3D optical transfer function, indicating the analyticity in the upper half-plane of the complex phase function, which allows for recovery of the 3D RI from a single intensity stack. We experimentally validated PSA-TIDT by conducting high-resolution tomographic imaging of various unlabeled biological samples, including human breast cancer cell lines (MCF-7), human hepatocyte carcinoma cell lines (HepG2), Henrietta Lacks (HeLa) cells, and red blood cells (RBCs).

Aerial seeding can quickly cover large and physically inaccessible areas 1 to improve soil quality and scavenge residual nitrogen in agriculture 2 , and for postfire reforestation 3-5 and wildland restoration 6,7 . However, it suffers from low germination rates, due to the direct exposure of unburied seeds to harsh sunlight, wind and granivorous birds, as well as undesirable air humidity and temperature 1,8,9 . Here, inspired by Erodium seeds 10-14 , we design and fabricate self-drilling seed carriers, turning wood veneer into highly stiff (about 4.9 GPa when dry, and about 1.3 GPa when wet) and hygromorphic bending or coiling actuators with an extremely large bending curvature (1,854 m -1 ), 45 times larger than the values in the literature 15-18 . Our three-tailed carrier has an 80% drilling success rate on flat land after two triggering cycles, due to the beneficial resting angle (25°-30°) of its tail anchoring, whereas the natural Erodium seed's success rate is 0%. Our carriers can carry payloads of various sizes and contents including biofertilizers and plant seeds as large as those of whitebark pine, which are about 11 mm in length and about 72 mg. We compare data from experiments and numerical simulation to elucidate the curvature transformation and actuation mechanisms to guide the design and optimization of the seed carriers. Our system will improve the effectiveness of aerial seeding to relieve agricultural and environmental stresses, and has potential applications in energy harvesting, soft robotics and sustainable buildings., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.)

Introduction: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has spread around the world, caused millions of deaths and a severe illness which poses a serious threat to human health., Objective: To develop an antigen detection kit that can identify Omicron novel coronavirus mutants., Methods: BALB/c mice were immunized with the nucleocapsid protein of SARS-CoV-2 Omicron mutant treated with β-propiolactone. After fusion of myeloma cells with immune cells, Elisa was used to screen the cell lines capable of producing monoclonal antibodies. The detection kit was prepared by colloidal gold immunochromatography. Finally, the sensitivity, specificity and anti-interference of the kit were evaluated by simulating positive samples., Results: The sensitivity of the SARS-CoV-2 antigen detection kit can reach 62.5 TCID 50 /mL, and it has good inclusiveness for different SARS-CoV-2 strains. The kit had no cross-reaction with common respiratory pathogens, and its sensitivity was still not affected under the action of different concentrations of interferences, indicating that it had good specificity and stability., Conclusion: In this study, monoclonal antibodies with high specificity to the N protein of the Omicron mutant strain were obtained by monoclonal antibody screening technology. Colloidal gold immunochromatography technology was used to prepare an antigen detection kit with high sensitivity to detect and identify the mutant Omicron strain.

Background: African swine fever virus (ASFV) is a highly contagious hemorrhagic disease and often lethal, which has significant economic consequences for the swine industry. Due to lacking of commercial vaccine, the prevention and control of ASF largely depend on early large-scale detection and screening. So far, the commercial ELISA kits have a long operation time and are expensive, making it difficult to achieve large-scale clinical applications. Nanobodies are single-domain antibodies produced by camelid animals, and have unique advantages such as smaller molecular weight, easy genetic engineering modification and low-costing of mass production, thus exhibiting good application prospects., Results: The present study developed a new method for detection of ASFV specific antibodies using nanobody-horseradish peroxidase (Nb-HRP) fusion proteins as probe. By using camel immunization, phage library construction and phage display technology, five nanobodies against K205R protein were screened. Then, Nb-HRP fusion proteins were produced using genetic modification technology. Based on the Nb-HRP fusion protein as specific antibodies against K205R protein, a new type of cELISA was established to detect ASFV antibodies in pig serum. The cut-off value of the cELISA was 34.8%, and its sensitivity, specificity, and reproducibility were good. Furthermore, the developed cELISA exhibited 99.3% agreement rate with the commercial available ELISA kit (kappa value = 0.98)., Conclusions: The developed cELISA method has the advantages of simple operation, rapid and low-costing, and can be used for monitoring of ASFV infection in pigs, thus providing a new method for the prevention and control of ASF., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

We present a new label-free three-dimensional (3D) microscopy technique, termed transport of intensity diffraction tomography with non-interferometric synthetic aperture (TIDT-NSA). Without resorting to interferometric detection, TIDT-NSA retrieves the 3D refractive index (RI) distribution of biological specimens from 3D intensity-only measurements at various illumination angles, allowing incoherent-diffraction-limited quantitative 3D phase-contrast imaging. The unique combination of z-scanning the sample with illumination angle diversity in TIDT-NSA provides strong defocus phase contrast and better optical sectioning capabilities suitable for high-resolution tomography of thick biological samples. Based on an off-the-shelf bright-field microscope with a programmable light-emitting-diode (LED) illumination source, TIDT-NSA achieves an imaging resolution of 206 nm laterally and 520 nm axially with a high-NA oil immersion objective. We validate the 3D RI tomographic imaging performance on various unlabeled fixed and live samples, including human breast cancer cell lines MCF-7, human hepatocyte carcinoma cell lines HepG2, mouse macrophage cell lines RAW 264.7, Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), and live Henrietta Lacks (HeLa) cells. These results establish TIDT-NSA as a new non-interferometric approach to optical diffraction tomography and 3D label-free microscopy, permitting quantitative characterization of cell morphology and time-dependent subcellular changes for widespread biological and medical applications., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Background: Among the most aggressive and rapidly lethal types of lung cancer, lung adenocarcinoma is the most common type. Exosomes, as a hot area, play an influential role in cancer. By using proteomics analysis, we aimed to identify potential markers of lung adenocarcinoma in serum., Methods: In our study, we used the ultracentrifugation method to isolate serum exosomes. The Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and bioinformatics analysis were used to identify potential serum exosomal proteins with altered expression among patients with advanced lung adenocarcinoma, early lung adenocarcinoma, and healthy controls. A western blot (WB) was performed to confirm the above differential expression levels in a separate serum sample-isolated exosome, and immunohistochemistry (IHC) staining was conducted to detect expression levels of the above differential proteins of serum exosomes in lung adenocarcinoma tissues and adjacent tissues. Furthermore, we compared different expression models of the above differential proteins in serum and exosomes., Result: According to the ITGAM (Integrin alpha M chain) and CLU (Clusterin) were differentially expressed in serum exosomes among different groups as well as tumor tissues and adjacent tissues. ITGAM was significantly and specifically enriched in exosomes. As compared to serum, CLU did not appear to be significantly enriched in exosomes. ITGAM and CLU were identified as serum exosomal protein markers of lung adenocarcinoma., Conclusions: This study can provide novel ideas and a research basis for targeting lung adenocarcinoma treatment as a preliminary study., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Fourier ptychographic diffraction tomography (FPDT) is a recently developed label-free computational microscopy technique that retrieves high-resolution and large-field three-dimensional (3D) tomograms by synthesizing a set of low-resolution intensity images obtained with a low numerical aperture (NA) objective. However, in order to ensure sufficient overlap of Ewald spheres in 3D Fourier space, conventional FPDT requires thousands of intensity measurements and consumes a significant amount of time for stable convergence of the iterative algorithm. Herein, we present accelerated Fourier ptychographic diffraction tomography (aFPDT), which combines sparse annular light-emitting diode (LED) illuminations and multiplexing illumination to significantly decrease data amount and achieve computational acceleration of 3D refractive index (RI) tomography. Compared with existing FPDT technique, the equivalent high-resolution 3D RI results are obtained using aFPDT with reducing data requirement by more than 40 times. The validity of the proposed method is experimentally demonstrated on control samples and various biological cells, including polystyrene beads, unicellular algae and clustered HeLa cells in a large field of view. With the capability of high-resolution and high-throughput 3D imaging using small amounts of data, aFPDT has the potential to further advance its widespread applications in biomedicine., (© 2021 Wiley-VCH GmbH.)

We present a 3D label-free refractive index (RI) imaging technique based on single-exposure intensity diffraction tomography (sIDT) using a color-multiplexed illumination scheme. In our method, the chromatic light-emitting diodes (LEDs) corresponding R/G/B channels in an annular programmable ring provide oblique illumination geometry that precisely matches the objective's numerical aperture. A color intensity image encoding the scattering field of the specimen from different directions is captured, and monochromatic intensity images concerning three color channels are separated and then used to recover the 3D RI distribution of the object following the process of IDT. In addition, the axial chromatic dispersion of focal lengths at different wavelengths introduced by the chromatic aberration of the objective lens and the spatial position misalignment of the ring LED source in the imaging system's transfer functions modeling are both corrected to significantly reduce the artifacts in the slice-based deconvolution procedure for the reconstruction of 3D RI distribution. Experimental results on MCF-7, Spirulina algae, and living Caenorhabditis elegans samples demonstrate the reliable performance of the sIDT method in label-free, high-throughput, and real-time (∼24 fps) 3D volumetric biological imaging applications.

The transport-of-intensity equation (TIE) is a well-established non-interferometric phase retrieval approach, which enables quantitative phase imaging (QPI) of transparent sample simply by measuring the intensities at multiple axially displaced planes. Nevertheless, it still suffers from two fundamentally limitations. First, it is quite susceptible to low-frequency errors (such as "cloudy" artifacts), which results from the poor contrast of the phase transfer function (PTF) near the zero frequency. Second, the reconstructed phase tends to blur under spatially low-coherent illumination, especially when the defocus distance is beyond the near Fresnel region. Recent studies have shown that the shape of the illumination aperture has a significant impact on the resolution and phase reconstruction quality, and by simply replacing the conventional circular illumination aperture with an annular one, these two limitations can be addressed, or at least significantly alleviated. However, the annular aperture was previously empirically designed based on intuitive criteria related to the shape of PTF, which does not guarantee optimality. In this work, we optimize the illumination pattern to maximize TIE's performance based on a combined quantitative criterion for evaluating the "goodness" of an aperture. In order to make the size of the solution search space tractable, we restrict our attention to binary-coded axis-symmetric illumination patterns only, which are easier to implement and can generate isotropic TIE PTFs. We test the obtained optimal illumination by imaging both a phase resolution target and HeLa cells based on a small-pitch LED array, suggesting superior performance over other suboptimal patterns in terms of both signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and spatial resolution.

In this Letter, we present a new active micro-scanning-based imaging platform and associated super-resolution (SR) phase retrieval method in lensfree microscopy to achieve SR dynamic phase imaging. The samples are illuminated by a nearly coherent illumination system, where two orthogonal parallel plates are inserted into the light path and rotate to achieve controllable source micro-scanning, permitting sub-pixel shifts of the holograms on x- and y-axis directions independently. Then sequential low-resolution sub-pixel-shifted holograms are processed to enhance spatial resolution and reconstruct quantitative phase images of the sample simultaneously. The reconstruction result of the benchmark quantitative phase microscopy target (QPT TM ) demonstrates a half-pitch lateral resolution of 775 nm across a large field-of-view of ∼29.84  mm 2 , surpassing 2.15 times that of the theoretical Nyquist-Shannon sampling resolution limit imposed by the pixel size of the imaging sensor (1.67 μm). The proposed approach is also evaluated by imaging unstained HeLa cells, suggesting it is a promising toolset for high-throughput monitoring and quantitative analysis of unlabeled biological samples.

We demonstrate a three-dimensional (3D) optical diffraction tomographic technique with multi-frequency combination (MFC-ODT) for the 3D quantitative phase imaging of unlabeled specimens. Three sets of through-focus intensity images are captured under an annular aperture and two circular apertures with different coherence parameters. The 3D phase optical transfer functions (POTF) corresponding to different illumination apertures are combined to obtain a synthesized frequency response, achieving high-quality, low-noise 3D reconstructions with imaging resolution up to the incoherent diffraction limit. Besides, the expression of 3D POTF for arbitrary illumination pupils is derived and analyzed, and the 3D imaging performance of annular illumination is explored. It is shown that the phase-contrast washout effect in high-NA circular apertures can be effectively addressed by introducing a complementary annular aperture, which strongly boosts the phase contrast and improves the imaging resolution. By incorporating high-NA illumination as well as high-NA detection, MFC-ODT can achieve a theoretical transverse resolution up to 200 nm and an axial resolution of 645 nm. To test the feasibility of the proposed MFC-ODT technique, the 3D refractive index reconstruction results are based on a simulated 3D resolution target and experimental investigations of micro polystyrene bead and unstained biological samples are presented. Due to its capability for high-resolution 3D phase imaging as well as the compatibility with a widely available commercial microscope, the MFC-ODT is expected to find versatile applications in biological and biomedical research., Competing Interests: The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest related to this article.

To prepare polyclonal antibodies (PcAb) against UspA1 of Moraxella catarrhalis (Mc), we used bioinformatic analysis to determine the surface exposed region in this protein that holds the antigen epitopes. Then the corresponding coding sequences for this fragment was artificially synthesized according to the codon usage of Escherichia coli. The gene fragment was then subcloned into the prokaryotic expression vector pET-28a(+) and expressed in E. coli rosseta (DE3), and then the recombinant UspA1-His proteins were purified. Two New Zealand white rabbits were immunized with this protein to prepare antiserum. The resulting PcAb was then purified from the antiserum with Protein A affinity column. The results of fluorescence antibody assay, enzyme linked immunosorbent assay and Western blotting analysis showed that the PcAb could specifically recognize the surface exposed region of UspA1 on Mc. The preparation of the PcAb laid a foundation of further development of rapid detection technique for M. catarrhalis.

In this work, we present an efficient quantitative phase imaging (QPI) approach using programmable annular LED illumination. As a new type of coded light source, the LED array provides flexible illumination control for noninterferometric QPI based on a traditional microscopic configurations. The proposed method modulates the transfer function of system by changing the LED illumination pattern, which provides noise-robust response of transfer function and achieves twice resolution limit of objective NA. The quantitative phase can be recovered from slightly defocused intensity images through inversion of transfer function. Moreover, the weak object transfer function (WOTF) of axis-symmetric oblique source is derived, and the noise-free and noisy simulation results validate the predicted theory. Finally, we experimentally confirm accurate and repeatable performance of our method by imaging calibrated phase samples and cellular specimens with different NA objectives., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest related to this article.

High-resolution wide field-of-view (FOV) microscopic imaging plays an essential role in various fields of biomedicine, engineering, and physical sciences. As an alternative to conventional lens-based scanning techniques, lensfree holography provides a new way to effectively bypass the intrinsical trade-off between the spatial resolution and FOV of conventional microscopes. Unfortunately, due to the limited sensor pixel-size, unpredictable disturbance during image acquisition, and sub-optimum solution to the phase retrieval problem, typical lensfree microscopes only produce compromised imaging quality in terms of lateral resolution and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Here, we propose an adaptive pixel-super-resolved lensfree imaging (APLI) method which can solve, or at least partially alleviate these limitations. Our approach addresses the pixel aliasing problem by Z-scanning only, without resorting to subpixel shifting or beam-angle manipulation. Automatic positional error correction algorithm and adaptive relaxation strategy are introduced to enhance the robustness and SNR of reconstruction significantly. Based on APLI, we perform full-FOV reconstruction of a USAF resolution target (~29.85 mm 2 ) and achieve half-pitch lateral resolution of 770 nm, surpassing 2.17 times of the theoretical Nyquist-Shannon sampling resolution limit imposed by the sensor pixel-size (1.67µm). Full-FOV imaging result of a typical dicot root is also provided to demonstrate its promising potential applications in biologic imaging.

For quantitative phase imaging (QPI) based on transport-of-intensity equation (TIE), partially coherent illumination provides speckle-free imaging, compatibility with brightfield microscopy, and transverse resolution beyond coherent diffraction limit. Unfortunately, in a conventional microscope with circular illumination aperture, partial coherence tends to diminish the phase contrast, exacerbating the inherent noise-to-resolution tradeoff in TIE imaging, resulting in strong low-frequency artifacts and compromised imaging resolution. Here, we demonstrate how these issues can be effectively addressed by replacing the conventional circular illumination aperture with an annular one. The matched annular illumination not only strongly boosts the phase contrast for low spatial frequencies, but significantly improves the practical imaging resolution to near the incoherent diffraction limit. By incorporating high-numerical aperture (NA) illumination as well as high-NA objective, it is shown, for the first time, that TIE phase imaging can achieve a transverse resolution up to 208 nm, corresponding to an effective NA of 2.66. Time-lapse imaging of in vitro Hela cells revealing cellular morphology and subcellular dynamics during cells mitosis and apoptosis is exemplified. Given its capability for high-resolution QPI as well as the compatibility with widely available brightfield microscopy hardware, the proposed approach is expected to be adopted by the wider biology and medicine community.

Transport of intensity equation (TIE) is a powerful tool for phase retrieval and quantitative phase imaging, which requires intensity measurements only at axially closely spaced planes without a separate reference beam. It does not require coherent illumination and works well on conventional bright-field microscopes. The quantitative phase reconstructed by TIE gives valuable information that has been encoded in the complex wave field by passage through a sample of interest. Such information may provide tremendous flexibility to emulate various microscopy modalities computationally without requiring specialized hardware components. We develop a requisite theory to describe such a hybrid computational multimodal imaging system, which yields quantitative phase, Zernike phase contrast, differential interference contrast, and light field moment imaging, simultaneously. It makes the various observations for biomedical samples easy. Then we give the experimental demonstration of these ideas by time-lapse imaging of live HeLa cell mitosis. Experimental results verify that a tunable lens-based TIE system, combined with the appropriate postprocessing algorithm, can achieve a variety of promising imaging modalities in parallel with the quantitative phase images for the dynamic study of cellular processes.