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Degradation of pharmaceuticals in water by TiO2 photocatalysis often suffers from low efficiency due to low activity and mass transfer limitation. In this work, diclofenac removal in tap water was performed by photocatalysis on TiO2 nanotube growth on Ti mesh substrate assisted by ozone (O3), which was generated from a hole-arrayed boron-doped diamond (HABDD) film electrode. The vertically oriented TiO2 nanotubes were used as the heterogeneous photocatalyst. The HABDD, as a self-standing diamond electrode, was designed and custom-made by MWCVD technology. The microstructures and crystalline of the TiO2 nanotubes and HABDD were characterized by a scanning electronic micrograph (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Unlike other ozone generation methods, direct generation of ozone in the flowing water was applied in the photocatalysis process, and its effect was discussed. The diclofenac removal performance of the electrochemical-photocatalytic system was studied depending on O3 generation efficiency, flowing rate, and the initial diclofenac concentration. The enhanced degradation effect from O3 molecules on TiO2 photocatalysis was attributed to the larger active surface area, the increased photo-generated charge separation rate, and the contact area of O3. The degradation efficiency in the combined electrochemical-photocatalytic TiO2/O3/UV system was higher than that of the O3/UV and TiO2/UV routes individually. Furthermore, a theoretical calculation was used to analyze the TiO2/O3 interface in aqueous media in terms of the final energy. This system created an almost in situ feeding channel of oxidants in the TiO2 photocatalysis process, thus increasing photocatalytic efficiency. This synergetic system is promising in the treatment of pharmaceuticals in water. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work describes a polydopamine-wrapped zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8) coating constructed on the sulfonated polyetheretherketone (PEEK). The coating is not only conducive to the controllable Zn2+ releases, but also exhibits excellent photothermal capacity under near-infrared (NIR) irradiation. in vitro antibacterial experiments indicate the coating possesses bactericidal efficiencies of 100% against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli under NIR. Without NIR, the ZIF-8/pDA-functionalized substrate shows favorable biocompatibility and enhanced osteogenic activities. We are convinced that this study may provide prospective opinions for developing the PEEK implants with photoinduced disinfection and osteogenesis for the repair of infected bone defects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Infection and malignant tumors are the most common diseases in people's daily life, which seriously threaten human health. Because of the frequent and extensive administration of antibiotics and chemodrugs, the prevalence of multidrug‐resistant bacteria and tumor cells makes the conventional therapies less effective and even invalid. To overcome the repugnant dilemma, herein the authors devise and develop a hollow Cu2−XS nano‐homojunction (nano‐HJ) platform for the effective eradication of both bacteria and tumors upon tissue‐penetrable near‐infrared (NIR) light irradiation. Hyaluronan (HA) is covalently decorated onto the nano‐homojunctions (nano‐HJs) surface to enhance their biocompatibility, tumor‐targeting ability, and cutaneous wound healing capability. The decorated nano‐HJs exert robust NIR‐activatable bactericidal modality and accelerate the cutaneous regeneration of bacteria‐invaded full‐thickness wounds through the synergy of photothermal/photodynamic effects, glutathione depletion, and HA assistance. After loading anticancer drug doxorubicin in the cavity of nano‐HJs, the antitumor therapy efficacy is greatly strengthened both in vitro and in vivo by the collaborative photo‐chemotherapy. Accordingly, this work not only highlights the great promise of the Cu2−XS nano‐HJs in the treatment of bacteria‐induced contagious diseases and malignant tumors but also opens up a new research direction for the biomedical application of homojunction nanoplatforms in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play a key role in regulating various biological processes such as participating in the post-transcriptional pathway and affecting the stability and/or the translation of mRNA. Current methods have extracted feature information at different levels, among which the characteristic stem-loop structure makes the greatest contribution to the prediction of putative miRNA precursor (pre-miRNA). We find that none of these features alone is capable of identifying new pre-miRNA accurately. Results In the present work, a pre-miRNA stem-loop secondary structure is translated to a network, which provides a novel perspective for its structural analysis. Network parameters are used to construct prediction model, achieving an area under the receiver operating curves (AUC) value of 0.956. Moreover, by repeating the same method on two independent datasets, accuracies of 0.976 and 0.913 are achieved, respectively. Conclusions Network parameters effectively characterize pre-miRNA secondary structure, which improves our prediction model in both prediction ability and computation efficiency. Additionally, as a complement to feature extraction methods in previous studies, these multifaceted features can reflect natural properties of miRNAs and be used for comprehensive and systematic analysis on miRNA.

Phototherapy has recently emerged as a competent alternative for combating bacterial infection without antibiotic-resistance risk. However, owing to the bacterial endogenous antioxidative glutathione (GSH), the exogenous reactive oxygen species (ROS) generated by phototherapy can hardly behave desired antibacterial effect. To address the daunting issue, a quad-channel synergistic antibacterial nano-platform of Ti 3 C 2 MXene/MoS 2 (MM) 2D bio-heterojunctions (2D bio-HJs) are devised and fabricated, which possess photothermal, photodynamic, peroxidase-like (POD-like), and glutathione oxidase-like properties. Under near-infrared (NIR) laser exposure, the 2D bio-HJs both yield localized heating and raise extracellular ROS level, leading to bacterial inactivation. Synchronously, Mo 4+ ions can easily invade into ruptured bacterial membrane, arouse intracellular ROS, and deplete intracellular GSH. Squeezed between the "ROS hurricane" from both internal and external sides, the bacteria are hugely slaughtered. After being further loaded with fibroblast growth factor-21 (FGF21), the 2D bio-HJs exhibit benign cytocompatibility and boost cell migration in vitro. Notably, the in vivo evaluations employing a mouse-infected wound model demonstrate the excellent photonic disinfection towards bacterial infection and accelerated wound healing. Overall, this work provides a powerful nano-platform for the effective regeneration of bacteria-invaded cutaneous tissue using 2D bio-HJs., (© 2021 Wiley-VCH GmbH.)

PS@TiO 2 @Ag spheres with triple-level core-shell nanostructures were prepared via a versatile coating procedure based on an electroless-plating-like solution deposition (EPLSD) method. A peroxo-titanium-complex (PTC) aqueous solution was used as the precursor to react with an aniline monomer in the EPLSD preparation. Aniline plays an important role in the TiO 2 layer anchoring process through the swollen effects of the PS cores. As extended, peroxo-metal-complex (PMC) with the d 0 configuration can be introduced onto PS spheres to form varieties of PS@metal oxide core-shell structures by this method under mild conditions. Ag layers were then modified onto the PS@TiO 2 spheres via the photocatalytic method. By the extraction of the PS cores, hollow TiO 2 and TiO 2 @Ag spheres could be obtained. The photochemical degradation of methylene blue (MB) under UV light irradiation was performed on the composite nanostructures., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing financial interest., (This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry.)