The crosstalk between SUMOylation and immune system in host-pathogen interactions.

Pathogens can not only cause infectious diseases, immune system diseases, and chronic diseases, but also serve as potential triggers or initiators for certain tumors. They directly or indirectly damage human health and are one of the leading causes of global deaths. Small ubiquitin-like modifier (SUMO) modification, a type of protein post-translational modification (PTM) that occurs when SUMO groups bond covalently to particular lysine residues on substrate proteins, plays a crucial role in both innate and adaptive immunologic responses, as well as pathogen-host immune system crosstalk. SUMOylation participates in the host's defense against pathogens by regulating immune responses, while numerically vast and taxonomically diverse pathogens have evolved to exploit the cellular SUMO modification system to break through innate defenses. Here, we describe the characteristics and multiple functions of SUMOylation as a pivotal PTM mechanism, the tactics employed by various pathogens to counteract the immune system through targeting host SUMOylation, and the character of the SUMOylation system in the fight between pathogens and the host immune system. We have also included a summary of the potential anti-pathogen SUMO enzyme inhibitors. This review serves as a reference for basic research and clinical practice in the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of pathogenic microorganism-caused disorders.

Defective acidic 2D COF-based catalysts for boosting the performance of polyoxymethylene diethyl ether synthesis under mild conditions.

Polyoxymethylene diethyl ethers (PODEEn) are oxygenated fuel additives with high performance due to their advantageous fuel properties. PODEEn can alleviate carbon debt as the production can utilize bioethanol and biomass syngas. Heterogeneous solid acid catalysts are desirable for an efficient PODEEn synthesis. In this study, well-defined sulfonated phthalocyanine-containing polymers were prepared, and the physicochemical properties were analyzed, exhibiting a 2D π-π stacking structure with crystalline-amorphous mixed phases. Owing to the tuning defects of the COF framework by mixing polymerization, the accessibility of the network and the capacity of strong acid were improved for the polymeric catalyst, showing an excellent activity with trioxane (TOX) conversion of 89% and PODEE2-8 selectivity of 87% at 80 °C under atmospheric pressure.

π-Conjugated polymeric phthalocyanine for the oxidative coupling of amines.

A cross-linked π-conjugated polymeric cobalt phthalocyanine material was developed by a facile, economical, scalable, and solid-phase synthesis method. In addition to being highly recyclable, this material showed greatly enhanced activity for the aerobic oxidative coupling of amines compared with a molecular catalyst before heterogenization, indicating good prospects for the material with a π-conjugated electronic character.

Construction of core-shell mesoporous carbon nanofiber@nickel cobaltite nanostructures as highly efficient catalysts towards 4-nitrophenol reduction.

We herein report small sized nickel cobaltite (NiCo2O4) nanosheets (103-144 nm × 71-97 nm) firmly coated on mesoporous carbon nanofibers (MCNFs), as active and stable catalysts for degradation of 4-nitrophenol in sewage with NaBH4 as the reductant. MCNFs with surface O-functionalities were first constructed by morphology-conserved transformation of zinc-trimesic acid fibers, which provide scaffolds to anchor trisodium citrate-induced Ni-Co hydroxide nanosheets. Upon calcination, the resultant core-shell MCNF@NiCo2O4 nanostructures were fabricated and characterized by SEM, TEM, X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and N2 adsorption/desorption techniques. The anchored NiCo2O4 nanosheets were dense (75 wt%) but well-dispersed on the surface of MCNF (pore size 4.0 nm), and proved to be highly active and stable towards the reduction of 4-nitrophenol to 4-aminophenol. It showed a large activity factor of 2.53 s-1 g-1, exceeding most transition metal oxide catalysts, and MCNF@NiCo2O4 could be cycled at least 20 times without obvious loss of activity. Temperature-programmed desorption and reduction by hydrogen (H2-TPD and H2-TPR) studies showed that, the metal oxide dispersion and thereby the amount of H2 adsorbed were enhanced, and the interfacial interaction was also strengthened. These should be responsible for the excellent activity and stability of MCNF@NiCo2O4 towards 4-nitrophenol reduction.

Extended effective carbon number concept in the quantitative analysis of multi-ethers using predicted response factors.

Flame ionized detector has been such widely applied in chemical analysis since its great invention and the discovery of chem-ionization. Thanks to the excellent contribution of Sternberg and the successors in this field, effective carbon number concept (ECN) can make the analysis calibration greatly simplified especially when authentic standard substances are unavailable or in the complicated case such as petrochemical industry and biomass processing. To supplement the ECN rule in multi-ethers, this work determined relative response factors of poly(oxymethylene) dimethyl ethers experimentally, and developed a probabilistic P1-P2 effective carbon number model (P-ECN) for multi-ethers compounds. showed this method could improve the precision of quantitative analysis for poly(oxymethylene) dimethyl ethers and could predict relative response factors of other ethers with similar structure to a degree. LOD for each DMMn monomer ranged between 0.4-0.7 ng, and MDL ranged between 2 and 4 ug/mL. In the practical quantitation of diluted samples at level of 10 ug/mL, the relative standard deviation was less than 5%. Practical ethers-fuel blend with complex composition also was quantified with errors less than 3%.

Anaerobic ammonium oxidation in polyvinyl alcohol and sodium alginate immobilized biomass system: a potential tool to maintain anammox biomass in application.

Anaerobic ammonium oxidation (anammox) has been proved to be a promising nitrogen removal method for treating ammonium-rich wastewater. However, because of the low-growth rate of anammox bacteria, maintenance of a sufficient amount of anammox biomass in reactor became a key factor in application. Gel immobilization is an efficient method to prevent biomass from being washed out and to promote hyper-concentrated cultures. This study focused on a nitrogen removal process by anammox enrichment culture immobilized in polyvinyl alcohol and sodium alginate (PVA-SA) gel beads. The rapid startup of reactor demonstrated that gel entrapment was supposed to be a highly effective technique for immobilizing anammox bacteria. The anammox bacteria present in the enrichment were identified to be Jettenia-like species (>98%). Moreover, the effect of hydraulic retention time (HRT), pH, and temperature on immobilized anammox processes were investigated. The effect of pH and temperature on the anammox process was evidently weakened in PVA-SA immobilized gel beads, however, the effect of HRT on the anammox reaction was enhanced. Therefore, a stable operated reactor could be obtained in an anaerobic sequencing batch reactor, which proved gel immobilization was an excellent method to maintain the biomass in anammox reactor for application.

Nitrogen removal performance of anaerobic ammonia oxidation co-culture immobilized in different gel carriers.

Four materials were prepared as carriers for immobilizing anaerobic ammonium-oxidizing sludge. Nitrogen removal performance by these immobilized gel bead groups was evaluated. The removal ratios of ammonium and nitrite by CMC anammox-immobilized beads were 100% and 95.3% in 48 hours, respectively. The removal efficiencies of ammonium and nitrite by SA, PVA-SA and PVA anammox-immobilized beads were lower than the CMC beads. Subsequently, the physical properties of the beads were studied. PVA-SA was found to be the best support material among the four by comparing the case of the immobilization procedure, nitrogen removal efficiencies, and the costs of materials. PVA-SA gel entrapment was optimized by an orthogonal experiment. The SEM micrographs displayed that the surface structure of PVA-SA immobilized beads is loose and finely porous, which facilitates diffusion of the nitrogen. The SEM micrographs also clearly showed that anammox bacteria existed in the gel beads. All results clearly demonstrate that immobilizing anammox sludge in gel carriers is feasible and exhibit good performance. This research provided a new route to maintain sufficient amount of anammox sludge in a practical anammox reactor.