G-Quadruplex-Induced Liquid-Liquid Phase Separation in Biomimetic Protocells.

Biomolecular condensates comprised of specific proteins and nucleic acids are now recognized as one of the key organizing mechanisms in eukaryotic cells. However, the specific roles played by the nucleic acid secondary structure and sequence in biomolecular phase separation are still not clear. Here, utilizing giant membrane vesicles (GMVs) as a protocell model, we found that single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) with a parallel G-quadruplex structure could functionally cooperate with a G-quadruplex-binding protein to form speckle-like puncta inside the GMVs. The clustering behavior is dependent on the structural diversity of G-quadruplexes, and the reversible clustering behavior implicated a new pathway in dynamically regulating the formation of biomolecular condensates. This finding represents a potential link between G-quadruplex-binding proteins and the resulting G-quadruplex-mediated biomolecular phase separation, which would gain insight into a wide range of biological processes associated with nucleic acid-modulated phase separation inside living cells.

Synthesis of Uniform CdSe Quantum Wires via Oriented Attachment.

In this work, a facile and catalyst-free method is developed to synthesize CdSe quantum wires (QWs) in organic solvent. Analysis on the intermediate products reveals that assembly of the initially-formed magic-sized CdSe clusters via oriented attachment plays a crucial role for generation of the well-defined QWs. Due to its simplicity, this method can be extended to production of many types of semiconductor QWs.

Crucial role of anions on arrangement of Cu2S nanocrystal superstructures.

Both of the arrays of Cu2S nanowires and the superlattices of Cu2S nanoparticles are obtained by the solventless thermolysis of copper thiolate in the presence of laurate. For the first time, the types of anions in the reaction system, which are generally neglected in previous studies, are found to determine the structure of the final assembly products. Furthermore, experimental results shows in the presence of Cl⁻ ions, Cl⁻ ions participate in the self-assembly process and promote the formation of Cu2S nanowire arrays. Finally, the content of Cl⁻ ions is gradually decreased with assembly reaction proceeding. Therefore, duiring the process, Cl⁻ ions play a role of 'catassembly' in the formation of Cu2S nanocrystal superstructures.

In situ conversion of ZnO microsphere from ZnS complex microstructure and photocatalytic study.

Precursor ZnS complex microstructure, synthesized under concentrated NaOH solution, was annealed at different temperatures to fabricate self-supported ZnO microstructure with large-scale yield. The crystal structure, morphology and chemical compositions of the as-prepared ZnO nanoparticles were examined by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller specific surface area (BET). The experimental results show that the obtained ZnO microsphere keeps an intact self-supported structure even after high temperature annealing and the XRD observation indicates that the crystal lattice becomes more integrated along with the elevation of annealing temperature. We further investigated the photocatalytic property towards eosin B and found that the photocatalytic property seems to be closely related to crystallinity of the lattice. As the crystallinity enhances, the photocatalytic performance of the ZnO self-supported microsphere becomes significantly better. Overall, the investigation indicates that we have prepared a novel kind of self-supported ZnO microsphere photocatalyst with the merit of mass production and high catalytic efficiency.

Shape-dependent electrocatalytic activity of monodispersed gold nanocrystals toward glucose oxidation.

We systematically explore the shape-dependent catalytic activities of Au nanocrystals toward glucose oxidation in alkaline electrolytes, which is strongly dependent on the shape of the Au nanocrystals. The {100}-bounded cubic Au nanocrystals are significantly more active than the {110}-bounded rhombic dodecahedral and {111}-bounded octahedral Au nanocrystals.