Enhanced Nonradiative Charge Recombination in Microfiber-Based Bismuthene.

After the first report of a graphene-based passive mode-locking ultrafast fiber laser, two-dimensional materials as efficient saturable absorbers offer a new horizon in ultrafast fiber laser. However, the interactions on atomic scale between these two-dimensional materials and fiber and the fiber effect on the carrier dynamics have not been realized. To figure out the exact role of fiber and the carrier dynamics affected by the fiber substrate related to ultrafast photonics, bismuthene, a newly reported 2D quantum material used in a passive mode-locking fiber laser, deposited on α-quartz has been investigated. We surprisingly found that the α-quartz substrate can strongly accelerate the nonradiative electron-hole recombination of bismuthene in theory, and the transient absorption spectra of bismuthene on normal glass and α-quartz further verify the substrate effect on carrier dynamics of bismuthene. The discovery provides new thinking about substrate effect to regulate the performance of ultrafast mode-locking fiber lasers as well as ultrafast photonics.

Morphological Innovation Drives Sperm Release in Bryophytes.

Plant movements for survival are nontrivial. Antheridia in the moss Physcomitrium patens (P. patens) use motion to eject sperm in the presence of water. However, the biological and mechanical mechanisms that actuate the process are unknown. Here, the burst of the antheridium of P. patens, triggered by water, results from elastic instability and is determined by an asymmetric change in cell geometry. The tension generated in jacket cell walls of antheridium arises from turgor pressure, and is further promoted when the inner walls of apex burst in hydration, causing water and cellular contents of apex quickly influx into sperm chamber. The outer walls of the jacket cells are strengthened by NAC transcription factor VNS4 and serve as key morphomechanical innovations to store hydrostatic energy in a confined space in P. patens. However, the antheridium in liverwort Marchantia polymorpha (M. polymorpha) adopts a different strategy for sperm release; like jacket cell outer walls of P. patens, the cells surrounding the antheridium of M. polymorpha appear to play a similar role in the storage of energy. Collectively, the work shows that plants have evolved different ingenious devices for sperm discharge and that morphological innovations can differ.

Enhanced Charge Separation in Nanoporous BiVO4 by External Electron Transport Layer Boosts Solar Water Splitting.

The optimization of charge transport with electron-hole separation directed toward specific redox reactions is a crucial mission for artificial photosynthesis. Bismuth vanadate (BiVO4 , BVO) is a popular photoanode material for solar water splitting, but it faces tricky challenges in poor charge separation due to its modest charge transport properties. Here, a concept of the external electron transport layer (ETL) is first proposed and demonstrated its effectiveness in suppressing the charge recombination both in bulk and at surface. Specifically, a conformal carbon capsulation applied on BVO enables a remarkable increase in the charge separation efficiency, thanks to its critical roles in passivating surface charge-trapping sites and building external conductance channels. Through decorated with an oxygen evolution catalyst to accelerate surface charge transfer, the carbon-encased BVO (BVO@C) photoanode manifests durable water splitting over 120 h with a high current density of 5.9 mA cm-2 at 1.23 V versus the reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE) under 1 sun irradiation (100 mW cm-2 , AM 1.5 G), which is an activity-stability trade-off record for single BVO light absorber. This work opens up a new avenue to steer charge separation via external ETL for solar fuel conversion.

ROS and calcium oscillations are required for polarized root hair growth.

Root hairs are filamentous extensions from epidermis of plant roots with growth limited to the apical dome. Cell expansion undergoes tightly regulated processes, including the coordination between cell wall loosening and cell wall crosslinking, to form the final shape and size. Tip-focused gradients and oscillations of reactive oxygen species (ROS) together with calcium ions (Ca2+) as indispensable regulated mechanisms control rapid and polarized elongation of root hair cells. ROS homeostasis mediated by plasma membrane-localized NADPH oxidases, known as respiratory burst oxidase homologues (RBOHs), and class III cell wall peroxidases (PRXs), modulates cell wall properties during cell expansion. The expression levels of RBOHC, an NADPH oxidase that produces ROS, and class III PRXs are directly upregulated by ROOT HAIR DEFECTIVE SIX-LIKE 4 (RSL4), encoding a basic-helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factor, to modulate root hair elongation. Cyclic nucleotide-gated channels (CNGCs), as central regulators of Ca2+ oscillations, also regulate root hair extension. Here, we review how the gradients and oscillations of Ca2+ and ROS interact to promote the expansion of root hair cells.

Robust Interlayer Exciton in WS2/MoSe2 van der Waals Heterostructure under High Pressure.

The van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures have rich functions and intriguing physical properties, which has attracted wide attention. Effective control of excitons in vdW heterostructures is still urgent for fundamental research and realistic applications. Here, we successfully achieved quantitative tuning of the intralayer exciton of monolayers and observed the transition from intralayer excitons to interlayer excitons in WS2/MoSe2 heterostructures, via hydrostatic pressure. The energy of interlayer excitons is in a "locked" or "superstable" state, which is not sensitive to pressure. The first-principles calculation reveals the stronger interlayer interaction which leads to enhanced interlayer exciton behavior in WS2/MoSe2 heterostructures under external pressure and reveals the robust peak of interlayer excitons. This work provides an effective strategy to study the interlayer interaction in vdW heterostructures and reveals the enhanced interlayer excitons in WS2/MoSe2, which could be of great importance for the material and device design in various similar quantum systems.

Resolving Colliding Larvae by Fitting ASM to Random Walker-Based Pre-Segmentations.

Drosophila melanogaster is an important model organism for research in neuro- and behavioral biology. Automated studies of their locomotion are crucial to link sensory input and neural processing to motor output which has led to numerous vision-based tracking systems. However, most of these approaches share the inability to segment the contours of colliding animals causing identity losses, appearing and disappearing animals, and the absence of posture and motion related measurements during the time of the collision. We present a novel collision resolution algorithm enabling an accurate contour segmentation of multiple touching Drosophila larvae. Our algorithm utilizes an adapted active shape model (ASM) to learn a low dimensional posture space which is fitted to random-walker generated pre-segmentations. We evaluate our collision resolution algorithm using three publicly available datasets and compare it with the current state-of-the-art methods. In addition, we introduce a refined dataset enabling a segmentation evaluation on the level of pixel accuracy. The results demonstrate that our approach outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches in both accuracy and computational time. We will incorporate this algorithm into our widely used tracking program to improve the statistical strength of the behavioral quantification and allow marker-free studies of interacting Drosophila larvae.

Dynamics of charge-transfer excitons in a transition metal dichalcogenide heterostructure.

Charge-transfer excitons are formed by photoexcited electrons and holes following charge transfer across a heterojunction. They are important quasiparticles for optoelectronic applications of semiconducting heterostructures. The newly developed two-dimensional heterostructures provide a new platform to study these excitons. We report spatially and temporally resolved transient absorption measurements on the dynamics of charge-transfer excitons in a MoS2/WS2/MoSe2 trilayer heterostructure. We observed a non-classical lateral diffusion process of charge-transfer excitons with a decreasing diffusion coefficient. This feature suggests that hot charge-transfer excitons with large kinetic energies are formed and their cooling process persists for about 100 ps. The long energy relaxation time of excitons in the trilayer compared to its monolayer components is attributed to the reduced carrier and phonon scattering due to the dielectric screening effect in the trilayer. Our results help develop an in-depth understanding of the dynamics of charge-transfer excitons in two-dimensional heterostructures.

Ultrafast charge transfer in a type-II MoS2-ReSe2 van der Waals heterostructure.

We fabricated a van der Waals heterostructure by stacking together monolayers of MoS2 and ReSe2. Transient absorption measurements were performed to study the dynamics of charge transfer, indirect exciton formation, and indirect exciton recombination. The results show that the heterostructure form a type-II band alignment with the conduction band minimum and valance band maximum located in the MoS2 and ReSe2 layers, respectively. By using different pump-probe configurations, we found that electrons could efficiently transfer from ReSe2 to MoS2 and holes along the opposite direction. Once transferred, the electrons and holes form spatially indirect excitons, which have longer recombination lifetimes than excitons in individual monolayers. These results provide useful information for developing van der Waals heterostructure involving ReSe2 for novel electronic and optoelectronic applications.

Porous germanene as a highly efficient gas separation membrane.

Using a gas separation membrane as a simple gas separation device has an obvious advantage because of the low energy consumption and pollution-free manufacturing. The first-principles calculations used in this work show that germanene with its divacancy is an excellent material for use as a hydrogen (H2) and helium (He) separation membrane, and that it displays an even better competitive advantage than porous graphene and porous silicene. Porous germanene with its divacancy is chemically inert to gas molecules, because it lacks additional atoms to protect the edged dangling germanium atoms in defects, and thus shows great advantages for gas separation over previously prepared graphene. The energy barriers to H2 and He penetrating porous germanene are quite low, and the permeabilities to H2 and He are high. Furthermore, the selectivities of porous germanene for H2 and He relative to other gas molecules are high, up to 1031 and 1027, respectively, which are superior to those of porous graphene (1023) and porous silicene (1013); thus the separation efficiency of porous germanene is much higher than that of porous graphene and porous silicene. Therefore, germanene is a favorable candidate as a gas separation membrane material. At the same time, the successful synthesis of germanene in the laboratory means that it is possible to use it in real applications.

A Partial E3 Deletion in Replication-Defective Adenoviral Vectors Allows for Stable Expression of Potentially Toxic Transgene Products.

Adenovirus (Ad) is used extensively for construction of viral vectors, most commonly with deletion in its E1 and/or E3 genomic regions. Previously, our attempts to insert envelope proteins (Env) of HIV-1 into such vectors based on chimpanzee-derived Ad (AdC) viruses were thwarted. Here, we describe that genetic instability of an E1- and E3-deleted AdC vector of serotype C6 expressing Env of HIV-1 can be overcome by reinsertion of E3 sequences with anti-apoptotic activities. This partial E3 deletion presumably delays premature death of HEK-293 packaging cell lines due to Env-induced cell apoptosis. The same partial E3 deletion also allows for the generation of stable glycoprotein 140 (gp140)- and gp160-expressing Ad vectors based on AdC7, a distinct AdC serotype. Env-expressing AdC vectors containing the partial E3 deletion are genetically stable upon serial cell culture passaging, produce yields comparable to those of other AdC vectors, and induce transgene product-specific antibody responses in mice. A partial E3 deletion thereby allows expansion of the repertoire of transgenes that can be expressed by Ad vectors.

The effect of adenovirus-specific antibodies on adenoviral vector-induced, transgene product-specific T cell responses.

In this study, we tested the effect of neutralizing Abs to different serotypes of E1-deleted Ad vectors on the immunogenicity of the homologous Ad vector or a vector derived from a heterologous serotype. Our results showed that, as expected, even low titers of passively transferred neutralizing Abs significantly reduced the homologous vectors' ability to elicit transgene-specific CD8(+) T cell responses. In addition, Abs changed the fate of transgene product-specific CD8(+) T cells by promoting their transition into the central memory cell pool, which resulted in markedly enhanced expansion of transgene product-specific CD8(+) T cells after a boost with a heterologous Ad vector. Non-neutralizing Abs specific to a distinct Ad serotype had no effect on the magnitude of transgene product-specific CD8(+) T cells induced by a heterologous Ad vector, nor did such Abs promote induction of more resting memory CD8(+) T cells. These results show that Abs to an Ad vaccine carrier affect not only the magnitude but also the profile of a vector-induced CD8(+) T cell response.

Construction and characterization of E1- and E3-deleted adenovirus vectors expressing two antigens from two separate expression cassettes.

Here we describe a series of replication-defective adenovirus vectors designed to express transgene products from two expression cassettes placed into the deleted E1 and E3 domains. Vectors that contained an E1 cassette with a cytomegalovirus promoter in the forward orientation and an E3 cassette with the chicken ß-actin promoter in the reverse orientation grew to acceptable yields and expressed both transgenes. Additionally, they elicited immune responses to both transgene products. Levels of expression and the vectors' immunogenicity were influenced by the presence of regulatory elements shared between the two expression cassettes. Specifically, vectors that carried the same intron and enhancer in both expression cassettes could be rescued and expanded, but they were poorly immunogenic. Deletion of the enhancer or both the enhancer and the intron from the E3 cassette increased T- and B-cell responses to both transgene products.

Self-complementary AAVs induce more potent transgene product-specific immune responses compared to a single-stranded genome.

Using a mouse model we show that self-complementary (sc) adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors pseudotyped with capsids of serotypes 2, 7 or 8 induce more potent transgene product-specific CD8(+) T cell and antibody responses compared to corresponding single-stranded (ss)AAV vectors. These data suggest that the higher and more rapidly appearing amounts of transgene product achieved with scAAV vectors may increase detrimental immune responses in gene transfer recipients.

Vaccine-induced T cells provide partial protection against high-dose rectal SIVmac239 challenge of rhesus macaques.

Despite enormous efforts by the scientific community, an effective HIV vaccine remains elusive. To further address to what degree T cells in absence of antibodies may protect against simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) disease progression, rhesus macaques were vaccinated intramuscularly with a chimpanzee-derived Ad vector (AdC) serotype 6 and then boosted intramuscularly with a serologically distinct AdC vector of serotype 7 both expressing Gag of SIVmac239. Animals were subsequently boosted intramuscularly with a modified vaccinia Ankara (MVA) virus expressing Gag and Tat of the homologous SIV before mucosal challenge with a high dose of SIVmac239 given rectally. Whereas vaccinated animals showed only a modest reduction of viral loads, their overall survival was improved, in association with a substantial protection from the loss of CD4(+) T cells. In addition, the two vaccinated Mamu-A*01(+) macaques controlled viral loads to levels below detection within weeks after challenge. These data strongly suggest that T cells, while unable to affect SIV acquisition upon high-dose rectal infection, can reduce disease progression. Induction of potent T-cell responses should thus remain a component of our efforts to develop an efficacious vaccine to HIV-1.

An efficient method of directly cloning chimpanzee adenovirus as a vaccine vector.

Adenoviral vectors have shown great promise as vaccine carriers and in gene transfer to correct underlying genetic diseases. Traditionally, construction of adenoviral vectors is complex and time consuming. In this paper, we provide an improved method for efficient generation of novel adenoviral vectors by using direct cloning. We introduce a feasible and detailed protocol for the development of chimpanzee adenoviruses (Ads) as molecular clones, as well as for the generation of recombinant virus from the molecular clones. Recombinant viruses are genetically stable and induce potent immune responses in animals. Generation of new Ad molecular clones or new recombinant Ad can be achieved in 2 months or 2 weeks, respectively.

A universal influenza A vaccine based on adenovirus expressing matrix-2 ectodomain and nucleoprotein protects mice from lethal challenge.

A universal influenza vaccine, designed to induce broadly cross-reactive immunity against current and future influenza A virus strains, is in critical demand to reduce the need for annual vaccinations with vaccines chosen upon predicting the predominant circulating viral strains, and to ameliorate the threat of cyclically occurring pandemics that have, in the past, killed tens of millions. Here, we describe a vaccine regimen based on sequential immunization with two serologically distinct chimpanzee-derived replication-defective adenovirus (Ad) vectors expressing the matrix-2 protein ectodomain (M2e) from three divergent strains of influenza A virus fused to the influenza virus nucleoprotein (NP) for induction of antibodies to M2e and virus-specific CD8(+) T cells to NP. In preclinical mouse models, the Ad vaccines expressing M2e and NP elicit robust NP-specific CD8(+) T-cell responses and moderate antibody responses to all three M2e sequences. Most importantly, vaccinated mice are protected against morbidity and mortality following challenge with high doses of different influenza virus strains. Protection requires both antibodies to M2e and cellular immune responses to NP.

Adenovirus vector-induced immune responses in nonhuman primates: responses to prime boost regimens.

In the phase IIb STEP trial an HIV-1 vaccine based on adenovirus (Ad) vectors of the human serotype 5 (AdHu5) not only failed to induce protection but also increased susceptibility to HIV-1 infection in individuals with preexisting neutralizing Abs against AdHu5. The mechanisms underlying the increased HIV-1 acquisition rates have not yet been elucidated. Furthermore, it remains unclear if the lack of the vaccine's efficacy reflects a failure of the concept of T cell-mediated protection against HIV-1 or a product failure of the vaccine. Here, we compared two vaccine regimens based on sequential use of AdHu5 vectors or two different chimpanzee-derived Ad vectors in rhesus macaques that were AdHu5 seropositive or seronegative at the onset of vaccination. Our results show that heterologous booster immunizations with the chimpanzee-derived Ad vectors induced higher T and B cell responses than did repeated immunizations with the AdHu5 vector, especially in AdHu5-preexposed macaques.

Adenoviral vectors persist in vivo and maintain activated CD8+ T cells: implications for their use as vaccines.

CD8(+) T cell-numbers rapidly expand and then contract after exposure to their cognate antigen. Here we show that the sustained frequencies of transgene product-specific CD8(+) T cells elicited by replication-defective adenovirus vectors are linked to persistence of low levels of transcriptionally active adenovirus vector genomes at the site of inoculation, in liver, and lymphatic tissues. Continuously produced small amounts of antigen maintain fully active effector CD8(+) T cells, while also allowing for their differentiation into central memory cells. The long-term persistence of adenoviral vectors may be highly advantageous for their use as vaccines against pathogens for which T-cell-mediated protection requires both fully activated T cells for immediate control of virus-infected cells and central memory CD8(+) T cells that, because of their higher proliferative capacity, may be suited best to eliminate cells infected by pathogens that escaped the initial wave of effector T cells.