Porphyrin-silver acetylide cluster catalysts with dual active sites for the electrochemical reduction of CO.

A one-step synthesis of porphyrin-silver acetylide clusters from tetra alkyne-substituted porphyrin is described. The solid-state properties of three 2D-like compounds were fully characterised using XPS and XRD while their catalytic properties under CO electroreduction reaction conditions were assessed and their faradaic efficiency quantified.

Selectivity of a Copper Oxide CO Reduction Electrocatalyst Shifted by a Bioinspired pH-Sensitive Polymer.

A bioinspired polymeric membrane capable of shifting the selectivity of a copper oxide electrocatalyst in the CO reduction reaction is described. The membrane is deposited on top of copper oxide thin films from wet deposition techniques under controlled conditions of humidity and self-assembles into an arranged network of micrometer-sized pores throughout the polymer cross-section. The membrane was composed of a block copolymer with a precisely controlled ratio of poly-4-vinylpyridine and poly(methyl methacrylate) blocks (PMMA--P4VP).

Noninvasive and Highly Multiplexed Five-Color Tumor Imaging of Multicore Near-Infrared Resonant Surface-Enhanced Raman Nanoparticles .

multiplexed imaging aims for noninvasive monitoring of tumors with multiple channels without excision of the tissue. While most of the preclinical imaging has provided a number of multiplexing channels up to three, Raman imaging with surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) nanoparticles was suggested to offer higher multiplexing capability originating from their narrow spectral width. However, multiplexed SERS imaging is still in its infancy for multichannel visualization of tumors, which require both sufficient multiplicity and high sensitivity concurrently.

Versatile Target-Guided Screen for Discovering Bidirectional Transcription Inhibitors of a Trinucleotide Repeat Disease.

Myotonic dystrophy type 1 originates from d(CTG·CAG) repeats that undergo aberrant expansion during normal processing because the d(CTG) repeat forms stable hairpin structures. Bidirectional transcription of d(CTG·CAG) yields two RNA transcripts that undergo repeat-associated non-ATG (RAN) translation to form homopolymeric proteins. Thus, both the r(CUG) transcript and the r(CAG) transcript are known to be toxic.