Enhancing the selectivity and conditional sensitivity of an antimicrobial peptide through cleavage simulations and homoarginine incorporation to combat drug-resistant bacteria.

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are considered one of the most promising new antimicrobial agents to combat antibiotic resistance and have garnered significant attention over the past few decades. However, their development has been hindered by high manufacturing costs, toxicity, and poor enzyme tolerance. In this study, we employed bioinformatics tools to simulate the trypsin cleavage of Esculentin-2P (E2P), a frog-derived AMP with 37 amino acids and performed functional screening to identify its effective active fragments.

Discovery and Optimisation of Novel Bombinin-Derived Peptides from Bombina variegata against Staphylococcus aureus.

Amphibian skin-secreted antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have garnered significant attention for their excellent biological activity and low propensity for drug resistance over the past 40 years. Bombinins and bombinin H, two classes of AMPs isolated from the skin secretions of Bombina species, demonstrate strong antimicrobial activity against broad-spectrum microorganisms. In this study, two novel peptides, bombinin-like peptide 7S and bombinin-H2L, were identified from the toad, Bombina variegata.

Improved split prime editors enable efficient in vivo genome editing.

Efficient prime editor (PE) delivery in vivo is critical for realizing its full potential in disease modeling and therapeutic correction. Although PE has been divided into two halves and delivered using dual adeno-associated viruses (AAVs), the editing efficiency at different gene loci varies among split sites. Furthermore, efficient split sites within Cas9 nickase (Cas9n) are limited.

Photoelectron Therapy Preventing the Formation of Bacterial Biofilm on Titanium Implants.

The exogenous bacterial infection and formation of biofilm on the surface of titanium implants can affect the adhesion, proliferation, and differentiation of cells associated with osteogenesis, ultimately leading to surgical failure. This study focuses on two critical stages for biofilm formation: i) bacterial adhesion and aggregation, ii) growth and proliferation. The titanium with well-organized titania nanotube arrays is first modified by nitrogen dopants, then loaded with CuFeSe nanoparticles to form a p-n heterojunction.

Ion-incorporated titanium implants for staged regulation of antibacterial activity and immunoregulation-mediated osteogenesis.

Antibacterial properties and osteogenic activity are considered as two crucial factors for the initial healing and long-term survivability of orthopedic implants. For decades, various drug-loaded implants to enhance biological activities have been investigated extensively. More importantly, to control the drug release timing is equally significant due to the sequential biological processes after implantation.

Regulation of the upconversion effect to promote the removal of biofilms on a titanium surface photoelectrons.

Biofilms on public devices and medical instruments are harmful. Hence, it is of great importance to fabricate antibacterial surfaces. In this work, we target the preparation of an antibacterial surface excited by near-infrared light the coating of rare earth nanoparticles (RE NPs) on a titanium surface.

Photoelectrons Sequentially Regulate Antibacterial Activity and Osseointegration of Titanium Implants.

Titanium implants are widely used ; however, implantation occasionally fails due to infections during the surgery or poor osseointegration after the surgery. To solve the problem, an intelligent functional surface on titanium implant that can sequentially eradicate bacteria biofilm at the initial period and promote osseointegration at the late period of post-surgery time is designed. Such surfaces can be excited by near infrared light (NIR), with rare earth nanoparticles to upconvert the NIR light to visible range and adsorb by Au nanoparticles, supported by titanium oxide porous film on titanium implants.

zPoseScore model for accurate and robust protein-ligand docking pose scoring in CASP15.

We introduce a deep learning-based ligand pose scoring model called zPoseScore for predicting protein-ligand complexes in the 15th Critical Assessment of Protein Structure Prediction (CASP15). Our contributions are threefold: first, we generate six training and evaluation data sets by employing advanced data augmentation and sampling methods. Second, we redesign the "zFormer" module, inspired by AlphaFold2's Evoformer, to efficiently describe protein-ligand interactions.

A novel Electro-Fenton process characterized by aeration from inside a graphite felt electrode with enhanced electrogeneration of HO and cycle of Fe/Fe.

A novel Electro-Fenton process characterized by aeration from inside a graphite felt electrode with enhanced generation of HO and cycle of Fe/Fe was proposed. The new type of Electro-Fenton process was used to degrade organic pollutants via graphite felt electrode aeration (GF-EA). The HO concentration by GF-EA could reach 152-169 mg/L in a wide pH range (3-10), which was much higher than that achieved by graphite felt using solution aeration (GF-SA, 37-113 mg/L).