Constructing living buildings: a review of relevant technologies for a novel application of biohybrid robotics.

Biohybrid robotics takes an engineering approach to the expansion and exploitation of biological behaviours for application to automated tasks. Here, we identify the construction of living buildings and infrastructure as a high-potential application domain for biohybrid robotics, and review technological advances relevant to its future development. Construction, civil infrastructure maintenance and building occupancy in the last decades have comprised a major portion of economic production, energy consumption and carbon emissions. Integrating biological organisms into automated construction tasks and permanent building components therefore has high potential for impact. Live materials can provide several advantages over standard synthetic construction materials, including self-repair of damage, increase rather than degradation of structural performance over time, resilience to corrosive environments, support of biodiversity, and mitigation of urban heat islands. Here, we review relevant technologies, which are currently disparate. They span robotics, self-organizing systems, artificial life, construction automation, structural engineering, architecture, bioengineering, biomaterials, and molecular and cellular biology. In these disciplines, developments relevant to biohybrid construction and living buildings are in the early stages, and typically are not exchanged between disciplines. We, therefore, consider this review useful to the future development of biohybrid engineering for this highly interdisciplinary application.

Plant Science View on Biohybrid Development.

Biohybrid consists of a living organism or cell and at least one engineered component. Designing robot-plant biohybrids is a great challenge: it requires interdisciplinary reconsideration of capabilities intimate specific to the biology of plants. Envisioned advances should improve agricultural/horticultural/social practice and could open new directions in utilization of plants by humans. Proper biohybrid cooperation depends upon effective communication. During evolution, plants developed many ways to communicate with each other, with animals, and with microorganisms. The most notable examples are: the use of phytohormones, rapid long-distance signaling, gravity, and light perception. These processes can now be intentionally re-shaped to establish plant-robot communication. In this article, we focus on plants physiological and molecular processes that could be used in bio-hybrids. We show phototropism and biomechanics as promising ways of effective communication, resulting in an alteration in plant architecture, and discuss the specifics of plants anatomy, physiology and development with regards to the bio-hybrids. Moreover, we discuss ways how robots could influence plants growth and development and present aims, ideas, and realized projects of plant-robot biohybrids.

Journey from the Center of the Cell - the intra- and intercellular transport of mRNA.

Transport and localized translation of mRNA is crucial for the proper spatiotemporal organization of proteins within cells. Distribution of RNAs to subcellular domains has recently emerged as a major mechanism for establishing functionally distinct compartments and structures in the cells. There is an emerging evidence that active transport of mRNA involves cytoskeleton and membrane trafficking pathways in fungi, plants and animals, suggesting that it is a common phenomenon among eukaryotes. The important highlights are that the RNA-binding proteins recognize the cargo mRNA and that RNPs are actively transported on the cytoskeletal tracks or co-transported with membranous compartments, such as the endoplasmic reticulum and endosomes. The interest of scientists has expanded over the past years in response to the discoveries that RNA can be exported from cells to play a role in the intercellular communication. In this review, we will focus on characterization of the RNA transport both, within a cell and between cells, and on the currently proposed mechanisms for RNA targeting.

Cavo-portal transposition in pediatric liver transplant recipients.

BACKGROUND: Cavo-portal transposition (CPT) at liver transplantation (LTx) allows portal revascularization of the liver in recipients in whom portal system thrombosis does not allow performance of porto-portal anastomosis. The aim was to present the cases of 2 children who underwent LTx and CPT in our institution. CASE REPORT: 1. A 10-year-old boy, after Kasai procedure and living donor LTx, was qualified for retransplantation 9 years after first LTx complicated with late portal vein thrombosis, portal hypertension, hypersplenism, and multiple GI bleeding episodes, after splenectomy and meso-caval shunt preventing GI bleeding. At retransplant surgery, CPT was done. Actual follow-up was 40 months. Doppler ultrasound and angio CT show normal flow within the graft's portal vein. Biochemical parameters were within normal range. There was no bleeding from the gastrointestinal tract. 2. A 14-month-old child after Kasai procedure was qualified for living donor liver transplantation. During surgery, thrombosis of the recipient portal system was found, which was not diagnosed before. The CPT was done. There were no complications during the postoperative course. The actual follow-up was 32 months, and the patient is doing well, with normal liver and renal function, without hypersplenism or ascites. There was no gastrointestinal bleeding. Doppler ultrasound showed normal intrahepatic portal and arterial flow in the transplanted liver. CONCLUSIONS: Cavo-portal transposition is an important option in portal vein revascularization in liver transplant recipients without access to the portal system. Long-term observation of these 2 cases did not show any late problems (e.g., bleeding from the gastrointestinal tract, renal function, hyperammonemia, ascites) related to cavo-portal transposition.

Calculations of substituent and solvent effects on the kinetic isotope effects of Menshutkin reactions.

Nitrogen, deuterium, halogen, and carbon kinetic isotope effects have been modeled for the Menshutkin reaction between methyl halides and substituted N,N-dimethylaniline at the HF/6-31G(d) level of theory augmented by the C-PCM continuum solvent model for several solvents. Systematic changes in geometries of the transition states and Gibbs free energies of activation have been found with phenyl ring substituents, solvent, and the leaving group. Kinetic isotope effects also change systematically; however, these changes are predicted to be small, inside the usual precision of the experimental measurements. On the contrary, no correlation has been found between the kinetic isotope effects and the Hammett constants for para substituents. Thus opposite to previous assumptions, our results indicate that kinetic isotope effects on the Menshutkin reaction cannot be used to predict the position of the transition state on the reaction coordinate.

PRimary coronary angioplasty versus thrombolytic therapy. Comparison of mortality in the acute phase of myocardial infarction - a single centre experience.

BACKGROUND: Patency of an infarct-related artery may be achieved by the use of primary coronary angioplasty or thrombolysis. In spite of the growing number of reports dealing with this topic, controversies exist as to the superiority of either of these therapeutic options. Moreover, the role of primary angioplasty has not yet been clearly defined in the guidelines of the Polish Cardiac Society. AIM: To compare mortality in the acute phase of myocardial infarction (MI) in patients treated with primary angioplasty versus patients receiving thrombolytic treatment. METHODS: Using prospectively collected data from all consecutive patients with acute MI admitted to our institution, we analysed retrospectively mortality in patients treated with primary angioplasty versus those who received thrombolysis. RESULTS: Between May 1996 and October 2000, 657 patients with acute MI were hospitalised. Of this group, in 66 (10%) patients primary angioplasty was performed, and 278 (42.3%) received thrombolysis. Cardiogenic shock complicated MI in 20 (30%) patients treated with angioplasty and in 19 (7%) thrombolysed patients. Total mortality in the acute phase of MI was 12 (18.2%) patients in the angioplasty group versus 26 (9.4%) patients in the medically treated group (p<0.05). Mortality among patients with cardiogenic shock was significantly higher in those who received thrombolysis than in those who underwent angioplasty [17 (89.5%) patients versus 11 (55%) patients (p<0.05)] and tended to be higher among patients without cardiogenic shock [9 (3%) thrombolysed patients versus 1 (2.2%) patient who underwent angioplasty, NS]. CONCLUSIONS: Primary coronary angioplasty improves the outcome in patients with acute MI complicated by cardiogenic shock and tends to decrease mortality among patients without cardiogenic shock.