A New NTRU-Type Public-Key Cryptosystem over the Binary Field

As the development of cloud computing and the convenience of wireless sensor netowrks, smart devices are widely used in daily life, but the security issues of the smart devices have not been well resolved. In this paper, we present a new NTRU-type public-key cryptosystem over the binary field. Specifically, the security of our scheme relies on the computational intractability of an unbalanced sparse polynomial ratio problem (DUSPR). Through theoretical analysis, we prove the correctness of our proposed cryptosystem. Furthermore, we implement our scheme using the NTL library, and conduct a group of experiments to evaluate the capabilities and consuming time of encryption and decryption. Our experiments result demonstrates that the NTRU-type public-key cryptosystem over the binary field is relatively practical and effective.     

5-Benzylidene-4-Oxazolidinones Are Synergistic with Antibiotics for the Treatment of Staphylococcus aureus Biofilms

The failure of frontline antibiotics in the clinic is one of the most serious threats to human health and requires a multitude of novel therapeutics and innovative approaches to treatment so as to curtail the growing crisis. In addition to traditional resistance mechanisms resulting in the lack of efficacy of many antibiotics, most chronic and recurring infections are further made tolerant to antibiotic action by the presence of biofilms. Herein, we report an expanded set of 5-benzylidene-4-oxazolidinones that are able to inhibit the formation of Staphylococcus aureus biofilms, disperse preformed biofilms, and, in combination with common antibiotics, are able to significantly reduce the bacterial load in a robust collagen-matrix model of biofilm infection.     

Nonhydrolyzable Heptose Bis- and Monophosphate Analogues Modulate Pro-inflammatory TIFA-NF-κB Signaling

d -Glycero-d -manno-heptose-1β,7-bisphosphate (HBP) and d -glycero-d -manno-heptose-1β-phosphate (H1P) are bacterial metabolites that were recently shown to stimulate inflammatory responses in host cells through the activation of the TIFA-dependent NF-κB pathway. To better understand structure-based activity in relation to this process, a family of nonhydrolyzable phosphonate analogues of HBP and H1P was synthesized. The inflammation modulation by which these molecules induce the TIFA-NF-κB signal axis was evaluated in vivo at a low-nanomolar concentration (6 nM) and compared to that of the natural metabolites. Our data showed that three phosphonate analogues had similar stimulatory activity to HBP, whereas two phosphonates antagonized HBP-induced TIFA-NF-κB signaling. These results open new horizons for the design of pro-inflammatory and innate immune modulators that could be used as vaccine adjuvant.