Search

Aims: The relationship between heme oxygenase‐1 (HO‐1) and human ischemic stroke outcome remains unclear, which was investigated in this study. Methods: Acute ischemic stroke patients admitted within 24 h were enrolled. Serum HO‐1 levels at baseline were measured via ELISA. Poor 3‐month functional outcome was defined as modified Rankin Scale (mRS) score 3–6. Multivariable‐adjusted binary logistic regression and restricted cubic spline models were employed to examine association between serum HO‐1 and functional outcome. HO‐1's additive prognostic utility was assessed by net reclassification index (NRI) and integrated discrimination improvement (IDI). Results: Of 194 eligible patients, 79 (40.7%) developed poor functional outcomes at 3‐month follow‐up. The highest quartile of serum HO‐1 was independently associated with a lower risk of poor functional outcome (adjusted OR 0.13, 95% CI 0.04–0.45; p = 0.001) compared with the lowest HO‐1 category. The relationship between higher HO‐1 levels and reduced risk of poor functional outcome was linear and dose responsive (p = 0.002 for linearity). Incorporating HO‐1 into the analysis with conventional factors significantly improved reclassification for poor functional outcomes (NRI = 41.2%, p = 0.004; IDI = 5.0%, p = 0.004). Conclusions: Elevated serum HO‐1 levels at baseline were independently associated with improved 3‐month functional outcomes post‐ischemic stroke. Serum HO‐1 measurement may enhance outcome prediction beyond conventional clinical factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ferroptosis, which is caused by iron‐dependent accumulation of lipid peroxides, is an emerging form of regulated cell death and is considered a potential target for cancer therapy. However, the regulatory mechanisms underlying ferroptosis remain unclear. This study defines a distinctive role of ferroptosis. Inhibition of CARM1 can increase the sensitivity of tumor cells to ferroptosis inducers in vitro and in vivo. Mechanistically, it is found that ACSL4 is methylated by CARM1 at arginine 339 (R339). Furthermore, ACSL4 R339 methylation promotes RNF25 binding to ACSL4, which contributes to the ubiquitylation of ACSL4. The blockade of CARM1 facilitates ferroptosis and effectively enhances ferroptosis‐associated cancer immunotherapy. Overall, this study demonstrates that CARM1 is a critical contributor to ferroptosis resistance and highlights CARM1 as a candidate therapeutic target for improving the effects of ferroptosis‐based antitumor therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lithium metal has been considered as the most promising anode material due to its distinguished specific capacity of 3860 mAh g–1 and the lowest reduction potential of ‐3.04 V versus the Standard Hydrogen Electrode. However, the practicalization of Li‐metal batteries (LMBs) is still challenged by the dendritic growth of Li during cycling, which is governed by the surface properties of the electrodepositing substrate. Herein, a surface modification with indium oxide on the copper current collector via magnetron sputtering, which can be spontaneously lithiated to form a composite of lithium indium oxide and Li‐In alloy, is proposed. Thus, the growth of Li dendrites is effectively suppressed via regulating the inner Helmholtz plane modified with LiInO2 to foster the desolvation of Li‐ion and induce the nucleation of Li‐metal in two‐dimensions through electro‐crystallization with Li‐In alloy. Using the In2O3 modification, the Li‐metal anode exhibits outstanding cyclic stability, and LMBs with lithium cobalt oxide cathode present excellent capacity retention (above 80% over 600 cycles). Enlightening, the scalable magnetron sputtering method reported here paves a novel way to accelerate the practical application of the Li anode in LMBs to pursue higher energy density. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surface plasmon can trigger or accelerate many photochemical reactions, especially useful in energy and environmental industries. Recently, molecular adsorption has proven effective in modulating plasmon‐mediated photochemistry, however the realized chemical reactions are limited and the underlying mechanism is still unclear. Herein, by using in situ dark‐field optical microscopy, the plasmon‐mediated oxidative etching of silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs), a typical hot‐hole‐driven reaction, is monitored continuously and quantitatively. The presence of thiol or thiophenol molecules is found essential in the silver oxidation. In addition, the rate of silver oxidation is modulated by the choice of different thiol or thiophenol molecules. Compared with the molecules having electron donating groups, the ones having electron accepting groups accelerate the silver oxidation dramatically. The thiol/thiophenol modulation is attributed to the modulation of the charge separation between the Ag NPs and the adsorbed thiol or thiophenol molecules. This work demonstrates the great potential of molecular adsorption in modulating the plasmon‐mediated photochemistry, which will pave a new way for developing highly efficient plasmonic photocatalysts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: An arginine aminopeptidase from Bacillus axarquiensis SWJSX8 (BAAP) was developed for the first time. The enzyme was purified 16.6‐fold with specificity activity of 267.2 U/mg protein and a total yield of 10.5% and was estimated to be 67.0 KDa by SDS‐PAGE. It exhibited the maximum activity at 55 °C and pH 8.5 and was activated by 15–20% NaCl with 50% improvement. BAAP was a metalloaminopeptidase and showed better preference for Arg‐pNA, Leu‐pNA and Lys‐pNA amongst the substrates tested. The introduction of BAAP improved the hydrolysis degree of pumpkin seed protein hydrolysates (PSPHs) by 5.7–8.2% and significantly increased the contents of small peptides and free amino acids, while decreased the bitter intensity score of the PSPHs hydrolysed by Alcalase 2.4 L. The antioxidant capacity of the PSPHs had also been improved. The newly developed BAAP has great potential to be used in hydrolysing proteins that are rich in arginine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To drive the application of surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) mapping in ex vivo diagnostic imaging and non-biological material characterization, we have designed a robust and accurate multiplex spectral fitting method using an alternating minimization algorithm to extract individual constituent Raman spectra with very small overall fitting error (as low as 2%). For each mixed Raman signal, constituent spectra and mixture coefficients were estimated jointly based on reference spectra that were measured in the lab. Our method is based on a Poisson model to reflect the photon counting nature of Raman signals and includes the nonlinear noise in the measured data, making our method robust against data containing relatively large random noise. In our method, we minimized a cost function consisting of two terms: (1) the overall fitting error between the measured and modeled spectra and (2) the sum of the individual error between each reference spectrum and its corresponding constituent. This method inherently guarantees that the estimates will approach the global minimum with monotonic convergence. The accuracy of our method was validated by applying it to a SERS spectral fitting problem and comparing our results to those from existing methods. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]