Unraveling the Binding Mechanism of Alzheimer’s Drugs with Irisin: Spectroscopic,Calorimetric, and Computational Approaches

The prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has been a major health concern for a long time. Despite recent progress, there is still a strong need to develop effective disease-modifying therapies. Several drugs have already been approved to retard the progression of AD-related symptoms; however, there is a need to develop an effective carrier system for the delivery of drugs to combat such diseases. In recent years, various biological macromolecules, including proteins, have been used as carriers for drug delivery. Irisin is a beneficial hormone in such diseases, including AD and related pathologies. Herein, the interaction mechanism of irisin with AD drugs such as memantine, galantamine, and fluoxetine is investigated. Fluorescence studies revealed that the above drugs bind to irisin with significant affinity, with fluoxetine having the highest binding affinity. Isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) complemented the spontaneous binding of these drugs with irisin, delineating various associated thermodynamic and binding parameters. Molecular docking further validated the fluorescence and ITC results and unfolded the mechanism that hydrogen bonding governs the binding of fluoxetine to irisin with a significant binding score, i.e., −6.3 kcal/mol. We believe that these findings provide a promising solution to fight against AD as well as a platform for further research to utilize irisin in the drug-delivery system for an effective therapeutic strategy.     

Reconstruction of Full-Length circRNA Sequences Using Chimeric Alignment Information

Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are RNA molecules formed by joining a downstream 3 splice donor site and an upstream 5 splice acceptor site. Several recent studies have identified circRNAs as potential biomarker for different diseases. A number of methods are available for the identification of circRNAs. The circRNA identification methods cannot provide full-length sequences. Reconstruction of the full-length sequences is crucial for the downstream analyses of circRNA research including differential expression analysis, circRNA-miRNA interaction analysis and other functional studies of the circRNAs. However, a limited number of methods are available in the literature for the reconstruction of full-length circRNA sequences. We developed a new method, circRNA-full, for full-length circRNA sequence reconstruction utilizing chimeric alignment information from the STAR aligner. To evaluate our method, we used full-length circRNA sequences produced by isocirc and ciri-long using long-reads RNA-seq data. Our method achieved better reconstruction rate, precision, sensitivity and F1 score than the existing full-length circRNA sequence reconstruction tool ciri-full for both human and mouse data.     

Microwave-assisted fracture toughness improvement in additively manufactured polylactic acid–copper composite

Journal of Materials Science - The composition variation in composites' structure can be customized to expand their applications for antennae, capacitors, and heat transfer devices. In this...     

Significant enhancement of electrical conductivity by incorporating carbon fiber into CoSb3 thermoelectric skutterudite fabricated by spark plasma sintering method

Journal of Materials Science - The effects of carbon fiber additions on the electrical and thermoelectric performance in p-type CoSb3-based skutterudite are reported. A threefold enhancement in...     

Groundwater contamination risks with manure-borne microorganisms under different land-application options

There is a huge potential for recycling animal manure in agricultural farms, but fecal microorganisms from land-applied animal manure can join shallow groundwater through leaching especially in alluvial formations. Thus, this study investigated the leaching rate of total viable count (TVC) below a 1.1-m soil depth in a field lysimeter planted with rice–maize–rice rotation, where the rotation received different treatments, i.e., chemical fertilizer, dry manure, fresh manure, alternate wetting and drying (AWD) irrigation, and traditional irrigation. Leachate samples of six major irrigation/rainfall events were collected and analyzed for TVC concentration. In the Aman rice season, manure application had a significantly higher TVC leaching (5.5 × 10⁶ colony forming units (CFU) per milliliter) than the no-manure treatment (8.2 × 10⁴ CFU/mL). In the maize season, manure application increased more than one log-scale of TVC leaching concentration. A higher concentration of TVC leaching (3 × 10⁵ CFU/mL) was observed even after 93 d of fresh manure application. The fresh manure had a higher TVC load, and it possibly helped microorganisms survive longer by providing a more manure-like environment in the soil. In the Boro rice season, manure application increased the TVC leaching up to 3–4 log-scale compared with the control treatment. The AWD irrigation increased TVC leaching compared with the continuous irrigation because the desiccation fractures developed in the AWD irrigation helped TVC bypass the organic-rich topsoil. The Boro rice fields had higher TVC leaching than the maize fields with higher manure doses. The study suggests that there is scope to improve manure management to protect the groundwater quality.     

Heat capacity, thermopower and magnetoresistance effects in multiferroic La0.5Bi0.5Mn0.5Fe0.5O3

We have carried out systematic investigations in perovskite multiferroic La_0.5Bi_0.5Mn_0.5Fe_0.5O₃ by means of X-ray diffraction, magnetisation, electrical resistivity, thermoelectric and heat capacity measurements. The magnetic behaviour of this composition is rather complex, though the magnetisation curve seems to be like a weak ferromagnetic material. However, there is no clear evidence of λ-anomaly in the heat capacity data down to 2 K, yet this behaviour corroborate the trends of semiconducting silicon below room temperature. The sensitivity of magnetic behaviour to the iron-manganese ratio is also demonstrated. In presence of an external field of 7 T, it exhibits a magnetoresistance of ?5 % at 130 K. The thermoelectric value increases linearly with decreasing temperature, and at room temperature the value is +85 μV/K, which is associated with the p-type polaronic conductivity.     

Gold nanoparticle-based enhanced lateral flow immunoassay for detection of Cronobacter sakazakii in powdered infant formula

Cronobacter sakazakii is an opportunistic foodborne pathogen that can infect newborns through powdered infant formula (PIF). In this study, we developed a novel enhanced lateral flow immunoassay (LFA) with enhanced sensitivity for detection of C. sakazakii in PIF by the naked eye. The proposed strategy for signal enhancement of the traditional LFA used concentrated gold nanoparticles (AuNP) as the enhancer to conjugate with capture antibodies, which could increase the immobilized capture antibodies concentration at the detection zone to improve capture efficiency. Besides, the detection signal was further amplified by accumulated AuNP as the C. sakazakii labeled with AuNP probes was captured by antibodies conjugated with enhancer at the test line. We also studied the effect of different concentrations of capture antibodies and concentrated AuNP on detection performance, and found that 2.2 mg/mL of capture antibodies and 0.06 nM concentrated AuNP were the optimal combination that could avoid a false-positive signal and maximally amplify the detection signal of the enhanced LFA. Using this strategy, the detection sensitivity of the enhanced LFA was 10³ cfu/mL and improved 100-fold compared with traditional LFA. The strip was highly specific to C. sakazakii, and the time for detection of C. sakazakii in PIF was shortened by 3 h. In summary, the enhanced LFA developed by the addition of concentrated AuNP as the enhancer can be used as a sensitive, rapid, visual qualitative and point-of-care test method for detecting target analytes.     

Moisture damage evaluation in SBS and lime modified asphalt using AFM and artificial intelligence

Neural Computing and Applications - Damage due to moisture in polymer modified asphalt pavements has been investigated for several decades; yet, the exact and mathematical causes of moisture are...     

Synthesis and flash sintering of zirconium nitride powder

Zirconium nitride (ZrN) is a transition metal nitride of great interest due to its excellent physical and chemical properties. This study aims to synthesize ZrN fine powders by a facile and low-cost urea route that avoids the use of any solvent. ZrCl₄ and urea mixtures were heat-treated at up to 1600˚C in nitrogen gas. The products were characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and thermogravimetric analysis. The effects of different processing parameters such as metal to urea molar ratio, heat treatment temperature, and dwelling time on the product phase and stoichiometry were studied to understand the synthesis method. In addition, synthesized ZrN powder was consolidated into near fully dense single-phase bulk ceramic with a homemade flash sintering setup. A constant DC electrical field of ∼80 V/cm and pressure of ∼14 MPa at room temperature triggered flash sintering without pre-heating, and the entire process finished in 200 s. The composition, microstructure, density, hardness, and oxidation properties of the sintered pellet were also characterized.     

Optimum harvesting area of convex and concave polygon field for path planning of robot combine harvester

Intelligent Service Robotics - This paper presents an optimum harvesting area of a convex and concave polygon for the path planning of a robot combine harvester. A convenient optimum harvesting...