Anelosimuseximius bioinspired ZnO nano cobwebs for environmental remediation of drugs and endocrine disruptors from water.

The pollution of wastewater with pharmaceuticals and endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in populated areas poses a growing threat to humans and ecosystems. To address this serious problem, various one-dimensional (1D) hierarchical ZnO-based nanostructures inspired by Anelosimus eximius cobwebs were developed and successfully grown on a glass substrate through simple hydrothermal synthesis. The nanorods (nr) obtained during primary growth were chemically etched with KOH (ZnO-KOH), followed by the secondary growth of nano cobweb-like (ncw) structures using polyethyleneimine (ZnO).

New Thiol-Sensitive Dye Application for Measuring Oxidative Stress in Cell Cultures.

A xanthene derivative, Granada Green dinitrobenzene sulfonate (GGDNBS), has been synthesized to assay cellular oxidative stress based on changes in the concentration of biothiols. The dye is able to react with biological thiols by a thiolysis reaction that promotes a change in fluorescence intensity. To demonstrate the usefulness of GGDNBS for in vivo oxidative stress measurements, 661 W photoreceptor-derived cells were exposed to light to induce ROS generation, and changes in GGDNBS fluorescence were measured.

A study on bioluminescence and photoluminescence in the earthworm Eisenia lucens.

Eisenia lucens is an earthworm living in the organic soil layer of decomposing wood. When irritated, the worm expels coelomic fluid through pores in its body wall, exhibiting blue-green bioluminescence. The mechanism of the bioluminescence, which seems to be different from other bioluminescence systems of terrestrial animals, has been studied in this work.

Fluorescence dynamics of coumarin C522 as a function of micelle confinement along with cyclodextrin supramolecular complex formation.

Our aim is to doubly confine a molecule of coumarin C522 in a host-guest supramolecular complex with β-cyclodextrin in a reverse sodium dioctyl sulfosuccinate (AOT) micelle using nonpolar n-heptane and polar water solvents. Varying the volumes of coumarin C522 and β-cyclodextrin dissolved in water allows us to control the water-pool diameters of the reverse micelle in n-heptane with values of w=3, 5, 10, 20, and 40, where w is the ratio of water concentration to AOT concentration in n-heptane. To study the fluorescence dynamics of coumarin C522, the spectral steady-state and time-resolved dependences are compared for the two systems coumarin C522(water)/AOT(n-heptane), denoted C522/micelle, and coumarin C522/β-cyclodextrin(water)/AOT(n-heptane), referred to as C522/CD/micelle.