Synthesis of carbon nitride in moist environments:A defect engineering strategy toward superior photocatalytic hydrogen evolution reaction

Intimate understanding of the synthesis-structure-activity relationships is an accessible pathway to overcome the intrinsic challenges of carbon nitride(g-C_(3)N_(4))photocatalysts.This work looks in the effects of humidity of the synthesis process to the morphology,chemical structure,band structure as well as the photocatalytic activity of g-C_(3)N_(4) materials.Four g-C_(3)N_(4) samples were prepared by heating melem in four gas environments:dry Ar,dry Air,moist Ar and moist Air.The photocatalytic activity measurements revealed that the samples synthesized in moist inert and oxidic gases environments displayed 20 and 10 times the photocata lytic H_(2) evolution activity of the samples synthesized in dry inert and oxidic gases environments,respectively.The reasons for this remarkable variety in photocata lytic activities had been through investigated.After all,the terminations of the carbon vacancies were identified as the dominant factor in enhancing H_(2) evolution performance.The work here thus demonstrating an example of defect engineering.

Oncogene GAEC1 regulates CAPN10 expression which predicts survival in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

AIM: To identify the downstream regulated genes of GAEC1 oncogene in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma and their clinicopathological significance. METHODS: The anti-proliferative effect of knocking down the expression of GAEC1 oncogene was stud-ied by using the RNA interference (RNAi) approach through transfecting the GAEC1 -overexpressed esophageal carcinoma cell line KYSE150 with the pSilencer vector cloned with a GAEC1 -targeted sequence, followed by MTS cell proliferation assay and cell cycle analysis using flow cytometry. RNA was then extracted from the parental, pSilencer-GAEC1 -targeted sequence transfected and pSilencer negative control vector transfected KYSE150 cells for further analysis of different patterns in gene expression. Genes differentially expressed with suppressed GAEC1 expression were then determined using Human Genome U133 Plus 2.0 cDNA microarray analysis by comparing with the parental cells and normalized with the pSilencer negative control vector transfected cells. The most prominently regulated genes were then studied by immunohistochemical staining using tissue microarrays to determine their clinicopathological correlations in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma by statistical analyses. RESULTS: The RNAi approach of knocking down gene expression showed the effective suppression of GAEC1 expression in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma cell line KYSE150 that resulted in the inhibition of cell proliferation and increase of apoptotic population. cDNA microarray analysis for identifying differentially expressed genes detected the greatest levels of downregulation of calpain 10 (CAPN10 ) and upregulation of trinucleotide repeat containing 6C (TNRC6C ) transcripts when GAEC1 expression was suppressed. At the tissue level, the high level expression of calpain 10 protein was significantly associated with longer patient survival (month) of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma compared to the patients with low level of calpain 10 expression (37.73 ± 16.33 vs 12.62 ± 12.44, P = 0.032). No significant correction was observed among the TNRC6C protein expression level and the clinocopathologcial features of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. CONCLUSION: GAEC1 regulates the expression of CAPN10 and TNRC6C downstream. Calpain 10 expression is a potential prognostic marker in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.