1. |
- Beal, Jacob, et al.
(author)
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Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density
- 2020
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In: Communications Biology. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2399-3642. ; 3:1
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data.
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2. |
- Chai, Gaoda, et al.
(author)
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Deciphering the Role of Chalcogen-Containing Heterocycles in Nonfullerene Acceptors for Organic Solar Cells
- 2020
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In: ACS Energy Letters. - : AMER CHEMICAL SOC. - 2380-8195. ; 5:11, s. 3415-3425
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The field of organic solar cells has experienced paradigm-shifting changes in recent years because of the emergence of nonfullerene acceptors (NFAs). It is critically important to gain more insight into the structure-property relationship of the emerging A-DAD-A-type NFAs. In this Letter, a family of NFAs named BPF-4F, BPT-4F, and BPS-4F incorporating various chalcogen-containing heterocycles, i.e., furan, thiophene, and selenophene, respectively, was designed and synthesized. These NFAs exhibited dramatic differences in their photovoltaic performances with device efficiencies of 16.8% achieved by the thiophene-based cells, which was much higher than the furan-based ones (12.6%). In addition, the selenophene-based NFA showed a red-shifted absorption relative to the furan- and thiophene-based ones and obtained a decent efficiency of 16.3% owing to an improved J(SC). The reasons why these NFAs performed differently are systematically studied by comparing their optoelectronic properties and film morphology, which provides new understandings of the molecular design of high-performance NFAs.
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3. |
- Juang, Yu-Pu, et al.
(author)
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Synthesis, distribution analysis and mechanism studies of N-acyl glucosamine-bearing oleanolic saponins
- 2020
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In: Bioorganic chemistry (Print). - : Elsevier. - 0045-2068. ; 99, s. 103835-
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- A series of N-acyl glucosamine-bearingtriterpenoidsaponins has been synthesized with cytotoxic activities evaluated against HL-60, PC-3, HCT-116, and CT-26 tumor cells. Saponins incorporated anoleanolic acid (OA) triterpenoidal core exhibited the highest cytotoxic activity. To study the influence of the lengths of acyl-carbon chain onN-position of glucosamine, cells were treated with28-propargylamides and then reacted with an azido-fluorogenic probe under CuAACclickreactions to visualize the intact distributions of these compounds by confocal microscopy and flow cytometry; it was found that cytotoxic-active compounds (30â32) located in the cytosol and inactivecompounds bearing longer carbon chains (33â35) were impenetrable across cell membranes.Our study demonstrated the defined lipophilic acyl-carbon chain length can precisely regulate thecytotoxic activityof saponins, which is useful for the future development of cytotoxic agents.Furthermore, using quantitative proteomics and immunolabeling,the mechanism ofcytotoxicity induced by the synthetic saponin after membrane penetration could be a result of activation of death receptor pathway and inhibition of PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway.
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4. |
- Li, Jinghua, et al.
(author)
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Effects of dissolved oxygen on the growth performance, haematological parameters, antioxidant responses and apoptosis of juvenile GIFT (Oreochromis niloticus)
- 2020
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In: Aquaculture Research. - : Hindawi Limited. - 1355-557X .- 1365-2109. ; 51:8, s. 3079-3090
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This study investigated the effects of different dissolved oxygen (DO) levels on the growth performance, antioxidant response and apoptosis of juvenile GIFT (genetically improved farmed tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus). GIFT were fed with five DO levels (1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 mg/L) for 60 days, and the results showed that the final body weight, weight gain rate, specific growth rate and crude protein and crude lipid contents of the fish muscle increased at 5 mg/L DO. The activities of the antioxidant and digestive enzymes were significantly up-regulated with increasing DO levels. However, the haemoglobin content, number of red blood cells, malondialdehyde content, transaminase activities, glucose content and lactic acid levels decreased at higher DO levels. Furthermore, the cardiomyocyte apoptotic index was significantly decreased with increasing DO levels. Our results show that 5 mg/L DO improved growth performance, promoted antioxidant enzyme activities and reduced liver damage in GIFT.
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5. |
- Zhong, Jun, et al.
(author)
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A Transcriptome-Wide Association Study Identifies Novel Candidate Susceptibility Genes for Pancreatic Cancer
- 2020
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In: Journal of the National Cancer Institute. - : Oxford University Press. - 0027-8874 .- 1460-2105. ; 112:10
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Background: Although 20 pancreatic cancer susceptibility loci have been identified through genome-wide association studies in individuals of European ancestry, much of its heritability remains unexplained and the genes responsible largely unknown. Methods: To discover novel pancreatic cancer risk loci and possible causal genes, we performed a pancreatic cancer transcriptome-wide association study in Europeans using three approaches: FUSION, MetaXcan, and Summary-MulTiXcan. We integrated genome-wide association studies summary statistics from 9040 pancreatic cancer cases and 12 496 controls, with gene expression prediction models built using transcriptome data from histologically normal pancreatic tissue samples (NCI Laboratory of Translational Genomics [n = 95] and Genotype-Tissue Expression v7 [n = 174] datasets) and data from 48 different tissues (Genotype-Tissue Expression v7, n = 74-421 samples). Results: We identified 25 genes whose genetically predicted expression was statistically significantly associated with pancreatic cancer risk (false discovery rate < .05), including 14 candidate genes at 11 novel loci (1p36.12: CELA3B; 9q31.1: SMC2, SMC2-AS1; 10q23.31: RP11-80H5.9; 12q13.13: SMUG1; 14q32.33: BTBD6; 15q23: HEXA; 15q26.1: RCCD1; 17q12: PNMT, CDK12, PGAP3; 17q22: SUPT4H1; 18q11.22: RP11-888D10.3; and 19p13.11: PGPEPI) and 11 at six known risk loci (5p15.33: TERT, CLPTMIL, ZDHHCIIB; 7p14.1: INHBA; 9q34.2: ABO; 13q12.2: PDX1; 13q22.1: KLF5; and 16q23.1: WDR59, CFDP1, BCAR1, TMEM170A). The association for 12 of these genes (CELA3B, SMC2, and PNMT at novel risk loci and TERT, CLPTMIL, INHBA, ABO, PDX1, KLF5, WDR59, CFDP1, and BCAR1 at known loci) remained statistically significant after Bonferroni correction. Conclusions: By integrating gene expression and genotype data, we identified novel pancreatic cancer risk loci and candidate functional genes that warrant further investigation.
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6. |
- Almquist, Ben, et al.
(author)
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Outstanding Reviewers for Materials Horizons in 2019
- 2020
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In: Materials Horizons. - : ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY. - 2051-6347 .- 2051-6355. ; 7:5, s. 1207-1207
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Journal article (other academic/artistic)abstract
- We would like to take this opportunity to highlight the Outstanding Reviewers for Materials Horizons in 2019, as selected by the editorial team for their significant contribution to the journal.
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8. |
- Luo, Zhenghui, et al.
(author)
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Fine-Tuning Energy Levels via Asymmetric End Groups Enables Polymer Solar Cells with Efficiencies over 17%
- 2020
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In: Joule. - : CELL PRESS. - 2542-4351. ; 4:6, s. 1236-1247
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Generally, it is important to fine-tune the energy levels of donor and acceptor materials in the field of polymer solar cell (PSCs) to achieve a minimal highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) energy offset, which yet is still sufficient for charge separation. Based on the high-performance small-molecule acceptor (SMA) of BTP-4F, we modified the end groups of BTP-4F from IC-2F to CPTCN-Cl. It was found that when both end groups were substituted by CPTCN-Cl, the energy level upshift was too large that caused unfavorable energetic alignment, thus poor device performance. By using the strategy of asymmetric end groups, we were able to achieve near optimal energy level match, resulting in higher open-circuit voltage (V-OC) and power conversion efficiency (PCE) compared with those given by the PM6:BTP-4F system. Our strategy can be useful and potentially applied to othermaterial systems for maximizing efficiency of non-fullerene PSCs.
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9. |
- Qin, Linqing, et al.
(author)
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Triplet Acceptors with a D-A Structure and Twisted Conformation for Efficient Organic Solar Cells
- 2020
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In: Angewandte Chemie International Edition. - : WILEY-V C H VERLAG GMBH. - 1433-7851 .- 1521-3773. ; 59:35, s. 15043-15049
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Triplet acceptors have been developed to construct high-performance organic solar cells (OSCs) as the long lifetime and diffusion range of triplet excitons may dissociate into free charges instead of net recombination when the energy levels of the lowest triplet state (T-1) are close to those of charge-transfer states ((CT)-C-3). The current triplet acceptors were designed by introducing heavy atoms to enhance the intersystem crossing, limiting their applications. Herein, two twisted acceptors without heavy atoms, analogues of Y6, constructed with large pi-conjugated core and D-A structure, were confirmed to be triplet materials, leading to high-performance OSCs. The mechanism of triplet excitons were investigated to show that the twisted and D-A structures result in large spin-orbit coupling (SOC) and small energy gap between the singlet and triplet states, and thus efficient intersystem crossing. Moreover, the energy level of T-1 is close to (CT)-C-3, facilitating the split of triplet exciton to free charges.
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10. |
- Samad, Ali, et al.
(author)
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White Paper on Machine Learning in 6G Wireless Communication Networks : 6G Research Visions, No. 7, 2020
- 2020
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Reports (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This white paper discusses various topics, advances, and projections regarding machine learning (ML) in wireless communications. Sixth generation (6G) wireless communications networks will be the backbone of the digital transformation of societies by providing ubiquitous, reliable, and near-instant wireless connectivity for humans and machines. Recent advances in ML research have enabled a wide range of novel technologies such as self-driving vehicles and voice assistants. Such innovation is made possible by the availability of advanced ML models, large datasets, and high computational power. In addition, the ever-increasing demand for connectivity will require even more extensive innovation in 6G wireless networks. Consequently, ML tools will play a major role in solving the new problems in the wireless domain. In this paper, we offer a vision of how ML will impact wireless communications systems. We first provide an overview of the ML methods that have the highest potential to be used in wireless networks. We then discuss the problems that can be solved by using ML in various layers of the network such as the physical, medium-access, and application layers. Zero-touch optimization of wireless networks using ML is another interesting aspect discussed in this paper. Finally, at the end of each section, a set of important future research questions is presented.
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