Plants convert solar energy and carbon dioxide into organic compounds through photosynthesis. Sucrose is the primary carbonate produced during photosynthesis. Sucrose phosphate synthase (SPS) is the key enzyme controlling sucrose biosynthesis in plants.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTo meet increasing requirement for innovative energy storage and conversion technology, it is urgent to prepare effective, affordable, and long-term stable oxygen electrocatalysts to replace precious metal-based counterparts. Herein, a two-step pyrolysis strategy is developed for controlled synthesis of FeO and MnO anchored on carbon nanotubes/nanosheets (FeO-MnO-CNTs/NSs). The typical catalyst has a high half-wave potential (E = 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe nature of molecule-electrode interface is critical for the integration of atomically precise molecules as functional components into circuits. Herein, we demonstrate that the electric field localized metal cations in outer Helmholtz plane can modulate interfacial Au-carboxyl contacts, realizing a reversible single-molecule switch. STM break junction and I-V measurements show the electrochemical gating of aliphatic and aromatic carboxylic acids have a conductance ON/OFF behavior in electrolyte solution containing metal cations (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTransition metal catalysts are regarded as one of promising alternatives to replace traditional Pt-based catalysts for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). In this work, an efficient ORR catalyst is synthesized by confining Fe C nanoparticles into N, S co-doped porous carbon nanosheets (Fe C/N,S-CNS) via high-temperature pyrolysis, in which 5-sulfosalicylic acid (SSA) demonstrates as an ideal complexing agent for iron (ΙΙΙ) acetylacetonate while g-C N behaves as a nitrogen source. The influence of the pyrolysis temperature on the ORR performance is strictly examined in the controlled experiments.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSugarcane, a cash crop, is easily affected by low temperature, which results in a decrease in yield and sugar production. Breeding a new variety with cold tolerance is an essential strategy to reduce loss from cold stress. The identification of germplasms and genes/proteins with cold tolerance is a vital step in breeding sugarcane varieties with cold tolerance via a conventional program and molecular technology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSignificant variability issues in metal-molecule contacts, such as adsorption geometry, lead to characteristic variability in the electrical responses of individual molecules. Herein, co-assembling 1-ethylimidazole (EIM) on Au(111) has been shown to be a feasible and effective strategy for tuning the binding configurations of pyridine-linked molecular junctions in the most common aqueous environments and atmospheric environments. The single-molecule conductance measurements clearly show a transition from multiple conductance peaks to a single conductance peak with increasing EIM concentration.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhotosynthesis in nature uses the MnCaO cluster as the oxygen-evolving center to catalyze the water oxidation efficiently in photosystem II. Herein, we demonstrate bio-inspired heterometallic LnCo (Ln = Nd, Eu and Ce) clusters, which can be viewed as synthetic analogs of the CaMnO cluster. Anchoring LnCo on phosphorus-doped graphitic carbon nitrides (PCN) shows efficient overall water splitting without any sacrificial reagents.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Colloid Interface Sci
October 2021
The electrochemical synthesis of hydrogen peroxide (HO) provides a greener and more efficient method compared with classic catalysts containing toxic metals. Herein, we used first-principles density functional theory (DFT) calculations to investigate 174 different single-atom catalysts with graphyne substrates, and conducted a three-step screening strategy to identify the optimal noble metal-free single atom catalyst. It is found that a single Ni atom loaded on γ-graphyne with carbon vacancies (Ni@V-γ-GY) displayed remarkable thermodynamic stability, excellent selectivity, and high activity with an ultralow overpotential of 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFN2 -fixing bacteria belonging to the genus Raoultella of the family Enterobacteriaceae are widely associated with plants. Raoultella sp. strain L03 was isolated from surface-sterilized sugarcane roots.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFQuorum sensing is a mechanism used by single-cell bacteria to monitor their population density and control a variety of physiological functions in a cell-density-dependent manner. An ultrasensitive quorum signal acyl-homoserine lactone (AHL) detecting Agrobacterium tumefaciens strain, which strongly overproduces quorum-sensing regulator TraR and was proved to be able to detect AHLs at nano-molar concentration, was used to detect the production of AHLs in three Mesorhizobium huakuii strains. We showed that AHLs were produced in these strains with some variations.
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