Nanocomposite adhesive hydrogels: from design to application.

With the rapid development of hydrogels, hydrogel adhesion has attracted increasing attention in the last decade, but strong adhesion remains a challenge due to the large amount of water in hydrogels. The factors that affect hydrogel adhesion mainly include chemistries of bonds, topologies of connection, and mechanisms of energy dissipation. Strategies such as surface modification, surface initiation, bulk modification, bridging polymers, topological adhesion, and the use of nanocomposites have been developed to achieve strong hydrogel adhesion.

Computational Nanomechanics of Noncollagenous Interfibrillar Interface in Bone.

The noncollagenous interfibrillar interface in bone provides the critical function of transferring loads among collagen fibrils and their bundles, with adhesive mechanisms at this site thus significantly contributing to the mechanical properties of bone. Motivated by the experimental observations and hypotheses, a computational study is presented to elucidate the critical roles of two major proteins at the nanoscale interfibrillar interface, that is, osteopontin (OPN) and osteocalcin (OC) in bone. This study reveals the extremely high interfacial toughness of the OPN/OC composite.

Deformation Mechanisms of "Two-Part" Natural Adhesive in Bone Interfibrillar Nano-Interfaces.

Noncollagenous proteins at nanoscale interfaces in bone are less than 2-3% of bone content by weight, while they contribute more than 30% to fracture toughness. Major gaps in quantitative understanding of noncollagenous proteins' role in the interfibrillar interfaces, largely because of the limitation of probing their nanoscale dimension, have resulted in ongoing controversies and several outstanding hypotheses on their role and function, arguably going back to centuries ago to the original work from Galileo. Our results from the first detailed computational model of the nano-interface in the bone reveal "synergistic" deformation mechanism of a "double-part" natural glue, that is, noncollagenous osteopontin and osteocalcin at the interfibrillar interface.

Aluminosilicate Nanotubes Embedded Polyamide Thin Film Nanocomposite Forward Osmosis Membranes with Simultaneous Enhancement of Water Permeability and Selectivity.

Nanocomposite membranes are strongly desired to break a trade-off between permeability and selectivity. This work reports new thin film nanocomposite (TFN) forward osmosis (FO) membranes by embedding aluminosilicate nanotubes (ANTs) into a polyamide (PA) rejection layer. The surface morphology and structure of the TFN FO membranes were carefully characterized by FTIR, XPS, FESEM and AFM.

Hydrogen sulfide reduces mRNA and protein levels of β-site amyloid precursor protein cleaving enzyme 1 in PC12 cells.

Hydrogen sulfide (H(2)S) is now identified as a new neuromodulator. Increasing evidence suggest that H(2)S may play an important role in the progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD). The aim of the present study is to investigate the effects of H(2)S on beta-site amyloid precursor protein cleaving enzyme 1 (BACE-1) expression and amyloid beta (Aβ) secretion in PC12 cells.

IGF-1 reduces BACE-1 expression in PC12 cells via activation of PI3-K/Akt and MAPK/ERK1/2 signaling pathways.

Insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) stimulates α-secretase processing of amyloid precursor protein (APP) and decreases Aβ production. Little is known about the relationship between IGF-1 and β-site amyloid precursor protein cleaving enzyme 1 (BACE-1), the protease essential for the production of β-amyloid peptides (Aβ). Here, we investigated the effect of IGF-1 on BACE-1 in PC12 cells.

Novel photoinduced grafting-chemical reaction sequence for the construction of a glycosylation surface.

Carbohydrates play a major role in many recognition events, such as blood coagulation, immune response, fertilization, cell growth, embryogenesis, and cellular signal transfer, which are essential for the survival of living entities. Synthetic carbohydrate-based polymers, so-called glycopolymers, are emerging as important well-defined tools for investigating carbohydrate-based biological processes and for simulating various functions of carbohydrates. In this work, we present a facile strategy for the formation of glycopolymer tethered on polypropylene microporous membrane surface.

Fabrication of glycosylated surface on polymer membrane by UV-induced graft polymerization for lectin recognition.

Increasingly, carbohydrate-protein interactions are viewed as important mechanisms for many biological processes such as blood coagulation, immune response, viral infection, inflammation, embryogenesis, and cellular signal transfer. However, the weak affinity of the interactions and the structural complexity of carbohydrates have hindered efforts to develop a comprehensive understanding of carbohydrate functions. Fortunately, synthetic polyvalent glycoligands give us a chance to reveal the nature of these biological processes.