Vesicle fusion induced by zwitterionic amphiphilic channels

A new strategy to induce vesicle fusion has been developed by employing pillar[5]arene derivatives that were channel-like and were prepared by appending side chains onto pillar[5]arenes backbones.The channels feature with hydrophilic negatively and positively charged groups at both ends and hydrophobic Trp residues at the outer surface,which endows the channels with amphiphilicity.The zwitterionic amphiphilic channels could spontaneously incorporate into the bilayer membranes of lipid vesicles to induce vesicle fusion driven by the electrostatic interactions between negatively charged and positively charged groups.

Effect of Micro-Dimples on Hydrodynamic Lubrication of Textured Sinusoidal Roughness Surfaces

Surface texturing has been applied to improving the tribological performance of mechanical components for many years. Currently, the researches simulate the film pressure distribution of textured rough surfaces on the basis of the average flow model, and however the influence of roughness on the film pressure distribution could not be precisely expressed. Therefore, in order to study the hydrodynamic lubrication of the rough textured surfaces, sinusoidal waves are employed to characterize untextured surfaces. A deterministic model for hydrodynamic lubrication of microdimple textured rough surfaces is developed to predict the distribution of hydrodynamic pressure. By supplementing with the JFO cavitation boundary, the load carrying capacity of the film produced by micro-dimples and roughness is obtained. And the geometric parameters of textured rough surface are optimized to obtain the maximum hydrodynamic lubrication by specifying an optimization goal of the load carrying capacity. The effect of roughness on the hydrodynamic pressure of surface texture is significant and the load carrying capacity decreases with the increase of the roughness ratio because the roughness greatly suppresses the hydrodynamic effect of dimples. It shows that the roughness ratio of surface may be as small as possible to suppress the effect of hydrodynamic lubrication. Additionally,there are the optimum values of the micro-dimple depth and area density to maximize the load carrying capacity for any given value of the roughness ratio. The proposed approach is capable of accurately reflects the influence of roughness on the hydrodynamic pressure, and developed a deterministic model to investigate the hydrodynamic lubrication of textured surfaces.

Artificial Water Channel Promoting Depolymerization of Actin Filaments to Trigger Cancer Cell Apoptosis

Actin filaments play important physiological functions,which have become potential targets of antitumor drugs.Using chemicals to intervene their polymerization-depolymerization dynamics would generate new strategies for designing antitumor drugs.In this report,an artificial water channel appending acetazolamide moiety,a ligand that can selectively bind to carbonic anhydrase IX,has been prepared.

Flexible Organic Framework-Modified Membranes for Osmotic Energy Harvesting

Bioinspired membranes are advantageous in capturing the osmotic energy.However,the conventional hybrid membranes possess low harvesting power density due to their low interfacial ionic transport efficiency and high internal resistance.Herein,a new kind of hybrid membranes consisting of porous polymer and flexible organic frameworks was developed.The 3D porous framework enables ions to flux with high efficiency at the polymer-framework interface,resulting in high osmotic energy harvesting efficiency.By systematically screening the pore size of the frameworks,the output power density as high as 5.7 W/m^(2) was achieved under 50-fold KCl salinity gradient.

Investigating Ion Transport through Artificial Transmembrane Channels Containing Introverted Groups

The investigation on the relationship between structure and transport activity of artificial transmembrane channels has still re-mained a challenge because of lacking strategy to precisely arrange the functional group in the channel structures.Herein,we report a general strategy to monitor ion transport through the artificial channels by using unimolecular tubular molecules containing intro-verted groups.We found that the ion transport rate decreased with elongation of the introverted sidechains and the channel with propyl group as the introverted sidechain exhibited the longest opening duration time.Moreover,we have revealed that,comparing to the ion transport rate,the opening duration is a more important factor for determining the transport activity of the artificial channels.