Publications by authors named "You-Zhi Dai"

Microbial extracellular proteins serve as important functions in wastewater treatment process. Analysis of their compositions and properties is crucial to probe their specific functions. However, conventional analytical techniques cannot obtain interest protein information from complex proteins.

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Biofilms, which are aggregates of microorganisms and extracellular matrices, widely colonize natural water bodies, wastewater treatment systems, and body tissues, and have vital roles in water purification, biofouling, and infectious diseases. Recently, multiple imaging modalities have been developed to visualize the morphological structure and material distribution within biofilms and to probe the microprocesses in biofilm matrices, including biofilm formation, transfer and metabolism of substrates, and cell-cell communication. These technologies have improved our understanding of biofilm control and the fates of substrates in biofilms.

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Pollutant degradation is present mainly in the surface layer of biofilms, and the surface layer is the most vulnerable to impairment by toxic pollutants. In this work, the effects of nanosized TiO (n-TiO) on the average thicknesses of biofilm and on bacterial attachment on different surfaces were investigated. The binding mechanism of n-TiO to the cell surface was also probed.

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In this work, the protein coronas of activated sludge proteins on TiO nanoparticles (TNPs) and ZnO nanoparticles (ZNPs) were characterized. The proteins with high affinity to TNPs and ZNPs were identified by shotgun proteomics, and their effects of on the distributions of TNPs and ZNPs in activated sludge were concluded. In addition, the effects of protein coronas on the aggregations of TNPs and ZNPs were evaluated.

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A series of visible-light responsive photocatalysts prepared using Ag3PO4 immobilized with graphene oxide (GO) with varying GO content were obtained by an electrostatically driven method, and 2,4-dichlorophenol (2,4-DCP) was used to evaluate the performance of the photocatalysts. The composites exhibited superior photocatalytic activity and stability compared with pure Ag3PO4. When the content of GO was 5%, the degradation efficiency of 2,4-DCP could reach 98.

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The synergistic mechanism of 2, 4, 6-trichlorophenol (TCP) degradation using a combination of Fe0 and anaerobic dechlorinating bacteria with batch processing was investigated. Experimental results showed that under the conditions of pH 7.0, Fe0 5 g x L(-1) and 2,4,6-TCP 30 mg x L(-1), the growth and interface enrichment of enriched-bacteria could be promoted by Fe0, the cell mass (expressed by D600) of Fe0/enriched-bacteria was about 1.

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