Designing a whole-cell biosensor applicable for S-adenosyl-l-methionine-dependent methyltransferases.

This study was undertaken to develop a high-throughput screening strategy using a whole-cell biosensor to enhance methyl-group transfer, a rate-limiting step influenced by intracellular methyl donor availability and methyltransferase efficiency. An l-homocysteine biosensor was designed based on regulatory protein MetR from Escherichia coli, which rapidly reported intracellular l-homocysteine accumulation resulted from S-adenosyl-l-homocysteine (SAH) formation after methyl-group transfer. Using S-adenosyl-l-methionine (SAM) as a methyl donor, this biosensor was applied to caffeic acid 3-O-methyltransferase derived from Arabidopsis thaliana (AtComT).

Designing a highly efficient type III polyketide whole-cell catalyst with minimized byproduct formation.

Background: Polyketide synthases (PKSs) are classified into three types based on their enzyme structures. Among them, type III PKSs, catalyzing the iterative condensation of malonyl-coenzyme A (CoA) with a CoA-linked starter molecule, are important synthases of valuable natural products. However, low efficiency and byproducts formation often limit their applications in recombinant overproduction.

Designing glucose utilization "highway" for recombinant biosynthesis.

cAMP receptor protein (CRP) is known as a global regulatory factor mainly mediating carbon source catabolism. Herein, we successfully engineered CRP to develop microbial chassis cells with improved recombinant biosynthetic capability in minimal medium with glucose as single carbon source. The obtained best-performing cAMP-independent CRP mutant conferred both faster cell growth and a 133-fold improvement in expression level of lac promoter in presence of 2% glucose, compared with strain under regulation of CRP.

Robust Carbon Nitride Homojunction Photoelectrode for Solar-Driven Water Splitting.

Achieving intimate particle-to-particle and particle-to-substrate contacts is the first priority for fabricating high-quality photoelectrodes to ensure sufficient visible light absorption and efficient charge separation/transport. To achieve this goal, a seeding strategy is designed to construct a robust carbon nitride (CN) homojunction photoelectrode, in which vaporized precursors are condensed into a compact seeding layer at low temperatures, inducing the further deposition of the top layer. This optimized photoelectrode displays an excellent photocurrent density of 320 μA cm in 0.

Engineering an SspB-mediated degron for novel controllable protein degradation.

Elegant controllable protein degradation tools have great applications in metabolic engineering and synthetic biology designs. SspB-mediated ClpXP proteolysis system is well characterized, and SspB acts as an adaptor tethering ssrA-tagged substrates to the ClpXP protease. This degron was applied in metabolism optimization, but the efficiency was barely satisfactory.

Levosimendan versus dobutamine for sepsis-induced cardiac dysfunction: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Levosimendan and dobutamine are extensively used to treat sepsis-associated cardiovascular failure in ICU. Nevertheless, the role and mechanism of levosimendan in patients with sepsis-induced cardiomyopathy remains unclear. Moreover, previous studies on whether levosimendan is superior to dobutamine are still controversial.

Evaluation on the effect of acupuncture on patients with sepsis-induced myopathy (ACU-SIM pilot study): A single center, propensity-score stratified, assessor-blinded, prospective pragmatic controlled trial.

Background: Sepsis-induced myopathy (SIM) is a disease that causes motor dysfunction in patients with sepsis. There is currently no targeted treatment for this disease. Acupuncture has shown considerable efficacy in the treatment of sepsis and muscle weakness.

Dynamic Effects of Initial pH of Substrate on Biological Growth and Metamorphosis of Black Soldier Fly (Diptera: Stratiomyidae).

Edible insects have become a recognized alternative and sustainable source of high-quality proteins and fats for livestock or human consumption. In the production process of black soldier fly (BSF), (Hermetia illucens L. [Diptera: Stratiomyidae]), initial substrate pH is a critical parameter to ensure the best value of insect biomass, life history traits, and quality bio-fertilizer.

Tuning to optimize SVM approach for assisting ovarian cancer diagnosis with photoacoustic imaging.

Support vector machine (SVM) is one of the most effective classification methods for cancer detection. The efficiency and quality of a SVM classifier depends strongly on several important features and a set of proper parameters. Here, a series of classification analyses, with one set of photoacoustic data from ovarian tissues ex vivo and a widely used breast cancer dataset- the Wisconsin Diagnostic Breast Cancer (WDBC), revealed the different accuracy of a SVM classification in terms of the number of features used and the parameters selected.