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Water-responsive materials undergo reversible shape changes upon varying humidity levels. These mechanically tough, yet flexible structures can exert significant forces and hold promise as efficient actuators for energy harvesting, adaptive materials, and soft robotics. Using nanoporous tripeptide crystals, we demonstrate that energy transfer during evaporation-induced actuation results from strengthening of water H-bonding that drives the contraction of the pores. The seamless integration of mobile and structurally bound water inside these pores with a supramolecular network which contains readily deformable aromatic domains, translates dehydration-induced mechanical stresses through the crystal lattice, suggesting a general mechanism of efficient water-responsive actuation. The observed strengthening of water bonding complements accepted understanding of capillary force induced reversible contraction for this class of materials. These minimalistic peptide crystals are much simpler in composition compared to natural water-responsive materials, and the insights provided here can be applied more generally for the design of high-energy molecular actuators. Poster presented at the 2020 Virtual Systems Chemistry Symposium, Advanced Science Research Center, City University of New York, New York, USA., This work was supported in part by The Office of Naval Research (ONR) (N00014-18-1-2492), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) (FA9550-19-1-0111), the EPSRC-funded ARCHIE-WeSt High Performance Computer (www.archie-west.ac.uk) for computational resource via EPSRC grant no. EP/K000586/1, and the CUNY/ Strathclyde partnership. C.T.H. acknowledges the support of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Chemistry Research Instrumentation and Facilities Program (CHE-0840277) and Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) Program (DMR-1420073).

Pancreatic cancer (PCa) is one of the most fatal cancers worldwide. Recently, many studies have confirmed that long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play crucial roles in the development of many human cancers, including PCa. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the biological role and underlying mechanisms of lncRNA small nucleolar RNA host gene 1 (SNHG1) in PCa progression. The results demonstrated that the expression levels of SNHG1 were increased in PCa cell lines and human tissue samples. High SNHG1 expression was notably correlated with adverse characteristics and poor survival of PCa patients. Knockdown of SNHG1 suppressed PCa cell proliferation in vitro and PCa tumor growth in vivo, and these effects might be associated with the induction of cell cycle arrest. We further confirmed that, in PCa cells, SNHG1 can negatively regulate miR-195 expression by acting as a ceRNA, and Cyclin D1 is a direct target of miR-195. Overexpression of miR-195 abrogated the oncogenic role of SNHG1 in PCa cells. Collectively, our results identified SNHG1 as a novel oncogenic lncRNA in PCa, and indicated that SNHG1/miR-195/Cyclin D1 axis might be a potential therapeutic target for PCa patients.

Powdery mildew caused by Podosphaera xanthii is an important disease of melon, and race 2F is the predominant race in most areas of China. Resistance to P. xanthii race 2F in melon K7-1 was controlled by a dominant gene, designated Pm-2F, in a 106-member population of recombinant inbred lines derived from K7-1× susceptible K7-2. Using bulked segregant analysis with molecular markers, we have identified two polymorphic simple sequence repeats (SSR) to determine that Pm-2F is located on linkage group II. Comparative genomic analyses using mapped SSR markers and the cucumber genome sequence showed that the melon chromosomal region carrying Pm-2F is homologous to a 288,223 bp genomic region on cucumber chromosome (chr) 1. The SSR markers on chr 1 of cucumber, SSR02734, SSR02733 and CS27 were found linked with Pm-2F. Comparative mapping showed that two SSR markers (SSR02734 and CMBR8) flanked the Pm-2F locus and two nucleotide binding site-leucine-rich repeat resistance genes were identified in the collinear region of cucumber. A cleaved amplified polymorphic sequence (CAPS) marker was developed from the sequence of resistance genes and it delimits the genomic region carrying Pm-2F to 0.8 cM. The evaluation of 165 melon accessions and 13 race differential lines showed that the newly developed CAPS (CAPS-Dde I) marker can be used as a universal marker for effective marker assisted selection in melon powdery mildew resistance breeding. The putative resistance gene cluster provides a potential target site for further fine mapping and cloning of Pm-2F.