Preparation and SERS applications of Ta2O5 composite nanostructures.

Noble metal and semiconductor composite substrates possess high sensitivity, excellent stability, good biocompatibility, and selective enhancement, making them an important research direction in the field of surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). Ta2O5, as a semiconductor material with high thermal stability, corrosion resistance, outstanding optical properties, and catalytic performance, has great potential in SERS research. This study aims to design and fabricate a composite SERS substrate based on Ta2O5 nanostructures, achieving optimal detection performance by combining the urchin-like structure of Ta2O5 with silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs). The urchin-like Ta2O5 nanostructures were prepared using a hydrothermal reaction method. The bandgap was modulated through structure design and the self-doping technique, the charge transfer efficiency and surface plasmon resonance effects were improved, thereby achieving better SERS performance. The composite substrate enables highly sensitive quantitative detection. This composite SERS substrate combines the electromagnetic enhancement mechanism (EM) and chemical enhancement mechanism (CM), achieving ultra-low detection limits of 10-13 M for R6G. Within the concentration range above 10-12 M, there is a good linear relationship between concentration and peak intensity, demonstrating excellent quantitative analysis capabilities. Furthermore, this composite SERS substrate is capable of precise detection of analytes such as crystal violet (CV) and methylene blue (MB), holding broad application prospects in areas such as food safety and environmental monitoring.

Stringent starvation protein A and LuxI/LuxR-type quorum sensing system constitute a mutual positive regulation loop in Pseudoalteromonas.

Bacteria commonly exhibit social activities through acyl-homoserine lactones (AHLs)-based quorum sensing (QS) systems to form their unique social network. The sigma factor RpoS is an important regulator that controls QS system in different bacteria. However, the upstream of RpoS involving regulation on QS system remains unclear. In Escherichia coli RpoS is regulated by stringent starvation protein A (SspA), which is dependent of histone-like nucleoid structuring protein (H-NS). To date, the connection between SspA and QS system is essentially unknown. Here, we characterized a typical LuxI/LuxR-type QS system in marine bacterium Pseudoalteromonas sp. T1lg65 which can produce four types of AHLs. The luxI encoding AHLs synthase and luxR encoding AHLs-responsive receptor are co-transcribed, providing advantages in rapidly amplifying QS signaling. Notably, SspA positively regulated luxI/luxR transcription by activating RpoS expression, which is mediated by H-NS. Interestingly, LuxR in turn positively regulated SspA expression. Therefore, SspA and QS system constitute a mutual positive regulation loop in T1lg65. In view of the crucial roles of SspA and QS system in environmental adaption, we believe that the improvement of bacterial tolerance to marine environments could be related to rapidly tuning SspA-involved QS programming.