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Synthetic genomics has provided new bottom-up platforms for the functional study of viral and microbial genomes. The construction of the large, gigabase (Gb)-sized genomes of higher organisms will deepen our understanding of genetic blueprints significantly. But for the synthesis and assembly of such large-scale genomes, the development of new or expanded methods is required. In this study, we develop an efficient pipeline for the construction of large DNA fragments sized 100 kilobases (kb) or above from scratches and describe an efficient method for "scar-free" engineering of the assembled sequences. Our method, therefore, should provide a standard framework for producing long DNA molecules, which are critical materials for synthetic genomics and metabolic engineering.

Fe2O3 has become a promising anode material in lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) in light of its low cost, high theoretical capacity (1007 mA h g−1) and abundant reserves on the earth. Nevertheless, the practical application of Fe2O3 as the anode material in LIBs is greatly hindered by several severe issues, such as drastic capacity falloff, short cyclic life and huge volume change during the charge/discharge process. To tackle these limitations, carbon-coated Fe2O3 (Fe2O3@MOFC) composites with a hollow sea urchin nanostructure were prepared by an effective and controllable morphology-inherited strategy. Metal-organic framework (MOF)-coated FeOOH (FeOOH@-MIL-100(Fe)) was applied as the precursor and self-sacrificial template. During annealing, the outer MOF layer protected the structure of inner Fe2O3 from collapsing and converted to a carbon coating layer in situ. When applied as anode materials in LIBs, Fe2O3@MOFC composites showed an initial discharge capacity of 1366.9 mA h g−1 and a capacity preservation of 1551.3 mA h g−1 after 200 cycles at a current density of 0.1 A g−1. When increasing the current density to 1 A g−1, a reversible and high capacity of 1208.6 mA h g−1 was obtained. The enhanced electrochemical performance was attributed to the MOF-derived carbon coating layers and the unique hollow sea urchin nanostructures. They mitigated the effects of volume expansion, increased the lithium-ion mobility of electrode, and stabilized the as-formed solid electrolyte interphase films.

Slow and controlled release systems for drugs, have attracted increasing interest recently. A highly efficient metal-organic gels (MOGs) drug delivery carrier, i.e., MIL-100(Al) gels, has been fabricated by a facile, low cost and environment friendly one-pot process. The unique structure of MIL-100(Al) gels leads to a high loading efficiency (620 mg/g) towards doxorubicin hydrochloride (DOX) as a kind of anticancer drugs. DOX-loaded MOGs exhibited high stability under physiological conditions and sustained release capacity of DOX for up to 3 days (under acidic environments). They further showed sustained drug release behavior and excellent antitumor effects in in vitro experiments on HeLa cells, in contrast with the extremely low biotoxicity of MOGs. Our work provides a promising way for the anticancer therapy, by utilizing this MOGs-based drug delivery system, as an efficient and safe vehicle.