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Lysozyme can kill bacteria by its enzymatic activity or through a mechanism involving its cationic nature, which can facilitate electrostatic interactions with the viral capsid, the negatively charged parts of nucleic acids, and polymerase, so binding to nucleic acids may be another biological function of lysozyme. Here, PCR was used as a research tool to detect the effects of lysozyme on the replication and transcription of nucleic acids after treatment in different ways. We found that lysozyme and its hydrolysate can enter cells and inhibit PCR to varying degrees in vitro, and degraded lysozyme inhibited nucleic acid replication more effectively than intact lysozyme. The inhibition of lysozyme may be related to polymerase binding, and the sensitivity of different polymerases to lysozyme is inconsistent. Our findings provide a theoretical basis for further explaining the pharmacological effects of lysozyme, such as antibacterial, antiviral, anticancer, and immune regulatory activities, and directions for the development of new pharmacological effects of lysozyme and its metabolites.

The idea of using space laser interferometer to measure the relative displacement change between two satellites has been considered for space gravitational waves detection and Earth gravity filed mapping in recent years. Some investigations on the key issues of laser interferometer in our working team have been presented in this paper. An on-ground laser interferometer prototype used for the demonstration of satellite-to-satellite ranging has been constructed, which is equipped with phasemeter, laser pointing modulation and laser phase-locking control. The experimental results show that path-length measurement sensitivity of the laser interferometer reaches 200 pm/√ Hz, and phase measurement precision achieves 2π × 10− 5 rad/√ Hz, and laser pointing modulation precision is better than 80 nrad/√ Hz, and laser phase-locking control precision attains 2π × 10− 4 rad/√ Hz within the frequency regime of 1 mHz–1 Hz. All of these demonstrate that the proposed laser interferometer has very promising feasibility to meet the requirement of the Taiji, TianQin and Space Advanced Gravity Measurement (SAGM) missions which are put forward by Chinese scientists.

Taiji space gravitational wave detection utilizes the laser interferometer to convert the tiny distance change into the phase fluctuation of the beat note. As to realize the sensitivity of 1 pm/√ Hz, the phasemeter needs to calculate the phase with the precision of 2πμ rad/√ Hz in the frequency range of 0.1 mHz and 1 Hz. In this paper, we report recent progress of the phasemeter for Taiji. Noises which possibly affect the measurement sensitivity are tested and discussed, especially the sampling noise and the frequency jitter. Finally, the accuracy of the phasemeter is calibrated. The result shows that the sensitivity has reached the requirement of Taiji in the frequencies between 0.01 Hz and 1 Hz, 0.1 mHz–1 mHz. Noises in the range of 1 mHz and 0.01 Hz, which have not yet depressed well, are dominated by the clocking jitter and the thermal fluctuation.

A comprehensive simulation was performed to better understand the impacts and effects of the additional technical noises on weak-light phase-locking for LISA. The result showed that the phase of the slave laser tracked well with the received transmitting light under different noise level, and the locking precision was limited by the phase readout noise when the laser frequency noise and clock jitter noise were removed. This result was then confirmed by a benchtop experimental test. The required LISA noise floor was recovered from the simulation which proved the validity of the simulation program. In order to convert the noise function into real time data with random characteristics, an algorism based on Fourier transform was also invented.

Due to high data rates and reliability, inter-satellite laser communication has developed rapidly in these days. However, the stability of the laser beam pointing is still a key technique which needs to be solved; otherwise, the beam pointing jitter noise would reduce the communication quality or, even worse, would make the inter-satellite laser communication impossible. For this purpose, a bench-top of the fine beam pointing control system has been built and tested for inter-satellite laser communication. The pointing offset of more than 100 μrad is produced by the steering mirror. With beam pointing control system turned on, the offset could be rapidly suppressed to lower than 100 nrad in less than 0.5 s. Moreover, the pointing stability can be kept at 40 nrad for yaw motion and 62 nrad for pitch motion, when the received beam jitter is set at 20 μrad.

The space laser interferometer has been considered the most promising means for detecting gravitational waves and improving the accuracy and spatial resolution of the Earth’s gravity model. An on-ground polarizing laser interferometer prototype equipped with one reference interferometer and two measurement interferometers having equal-length arms is presented in the paper. The laser interferometer prototype is designed as the demonstration of a Chinese space laser interferometer antenna in the future, of which the path-length measurement performance evaluation and preliminary noise analysis are investigated here. The results show that the path-length measurement sensitivity is better than 200 pm/Hz½ in the frequency band of 10 mHz–1 Hz, and the sensitivity of measuring the motion of a sinusoidally driven testmass is better than 100 pm within the frequency regime of 1 mHz–1 Hz. In this way, laboratory activities have demonstrated the feasibility of this prototype to measure tiny path-length fluctuations of the simulated testmass. As a next step, adopting an integrated design of optics and optical substrate to enhance the stability of the laser interferometer is being planned, and other key techniques included in the space laser interferometer such as laser pointing modulation and laser phase-locking control are to be implanted into this prototype are under consideration.

Complementary to ground-based laser interferometers, pulsar timing array experiments are being carried out to search for nanohertz gravitational waves. Using the world's most powerful radio telescopes, three major international collaborations have collected $\sim$10-year high precision timing data for tens of millisecond pulsars. In this paper we give an overview on pulsar timing experiments, gravitational wave detection in the nanohertz regime, and recent results obtained by various timing array projects.