The Calvin–Benson–Bassham (CBB) cycle is presumably evolved for optimal synthesis of C3 sugars, but not for the production of C2 metabolite acetyl-CoA. The carbon loss in producing acetyl-CoA from decarboxylation of C3 sugar limits the maximum carbon yield of photosynthesis. Here we design a synthetic malyl-CoA-glycerate (MCG) pathway to augment the CBB cycle for efficient acetyl-CoA synthesis. This pathway converts a C3 metabolite to two acetyl-CoA by fixation of one additional CO2 equivalent, or assimilates glyoxylate, a photorespiration intermediate, to produce acetyl-CoA without net carbon loss. We first functionally demonstrate the design of the MCG pathway in vitro and in Escherichia coli. We then implement the pathway in a photosynthetic organism Synechococcus elongates PCC7942, and show that it increases the intracellular acetyl-CoA pool and enhances bicarbonate assimilation by roughly 2-fold. This work provides a strategy to improve carbon fixation efficiency in photosynthetic organisms.

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In an attempt to bridge the gap between atomistic and continuum plasticity simulations of hydrogen in iron, we present three dimensional discrete dislocation plasticity simulations incorporating the hydrogen elastic stress and a hydrogen dependent dislocation mobility law. The hydrogen induced stress is incorporated following the formulation derived by Gu and El-Awady (2018) which here we extend to a finite boundary value problem, a microcantilever beam, via the superposition principle. The hydrogen dependent mobility law is based on first principle calculations by Katzarov et al. (2017) and was found to promote dislocation generation and enhance slip planarity at a bulk hydrogen concentration of 0.1 appm; which is typical for bcc materials. The hydrogen elastic stress produced the same behaviour, but only when the bulk concentration was extremely high. In a microcantilever, hydrogen was found to promote dislocation activity which lowered the flow stress and generated more pronounced slip steps on the free surfaces. These observations are consistent with the hydrogen enhanced localized plasticity (HELP) mechanism, and it is concluded that both the hydrogen elastic stress and hydrogen increased dislocation mobility are viable explanations for HELP. However it is the latter that dominates at the low concentrations typically found in bcc metals.

Experimentally, it has been shown that hydrogen can either enhance the internal necking failure or induce internal shearing failure of microvoids. In this study, the numerical investigation of hydrogen-microvoid interactions under the framework of hydrogen enhanced localized plasticity mechanism reveals that the actual effect of hydrogen depends on the stress state as well as on the hydrogen trapping effect. Hydrogen enhanced internal necking failure is observed over the entire stress space at a low level of trapping effect. While such failure is still observed in the high triaxiality regime at a high level of trapping effect, hydrogen induced internal shearing failure is observed in the low triaxiality regime. A hydrogen induced internal shearing failure criterion is proposed, and the failure loci corresponding to the low and high levels of trapping effect are constructed.The hydrogen induced internal shearing failure locus is found to be approximately independent of stress triaxiality while the hydrogen enhanced internal necking failure locus maintains similar triaxiality dependency as in the absence of hydrogen. The loss of ductility, in terms of reduction in failure strain and dimple size, is more pronounced in the case of hydrogen induced internal shearing failure. Subsequent study of the Lode effect reveals that plane strain tension is the most critical case for hydrogen induced internal shearing failure while axisymmetric tension is the most critical for hydrogen enhanced internal necking failure.

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A novel bibenzyl, a new bibenzyl, two new phenanthrenes, and a new lignin glycoside, namely longicornuol A (1), 4-[2-(3-hdroxyphenol)-1-methoxyethyl]-2,6-dimethoxyphenol (2), 5-hydroxy-7-methoxy-9,10-dihydrophenanthrene-1,4-dione (3), 7-methoxy-9,10-dihydrophenanthrene-2,4,5-triol (4) and erythro-1-(4-O-beta-D-glucopyranosyl-3-methoxyphenyl)-2-[4-(3-hydroxypropyl)-2,6-dimethoxyphenoxy]-1,3-propanediol ( 5), together with 14 known compounds, were isolated from the stems of Dendrobium longicornu. All structures were elucidated by spectroscopic methods (NMR, MS, UV and IR). Anti-platelet aggregation activities of compounds 1 - 5 were also tested.

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