Blue energy harvested from the ocean is an important and promising renewable energy for the sustainable development of society. Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) are considered one of the most promising approaches for harvesting blue energy. In this work, a liquid–solid‐contact triboelectric nanogenerator (LS TENG) is fabricated to enhance the friction and magnify energy output by 48.7 times, when compared with the solid–solid‐contact TENG with the same area. The buoy‐like LS TENG can harvest energy from different types of low‐frequency vibration (including up–down, shaking, and rotation movements). Moreover, the outputs of the LS TENGs network can reach 290 µA, 16 725 nC, and 300 V, and the LS TENGs network can directly power hundreds of LEDs and drive a radio frequency emitter to form a self‐powered wireless save our souls (SOS) system for ocean emergencies. This work renders an innovative and effective approach toward large‐scale blue energy harvesting and applications.
Cotranslational chaperones, ubiquitous in all living organisms, protect nascent polypeptides from aggregation and facilitate their de novo folding. Importantly, emerging data have also suggested that ribosome-associated cotranslational chaperones have active regulatory roles in modulating protein translation. By characterizing the structure of a type of eukaryotic cotranslational chaperone, the ribosome-associated complex (RAC) from Saccharomyces cerevisiae, we show that RAC cross-links two ribosomal subunits, through a single long α-helix, to limit the predominant intersubunit rotation required for peptide elongation. We further demonstrate that any changes in the continuity, length or rigidity of this middle α-helix impair RAC function in vivo. Our results suggest a new mechanism in which RAC directly regulates protein translation by mechanically coupling cotranslational folding with the peptide-elongation cycle, and they lay the foundation for further exploration of regulatory roles of RAC in translation control.
Cell migration is crucial in many physiological and pathological processes including embryonic development, immune response and cancer metastasis. Traditional methods for cell migration detection such as wound healing assay usually involve physical scraping of a cell monolayer followed by an optical observation of cell movement. However, these methods require hand-operation with low repeatability. Moreover, it's a qualitative observation not a quantitative measurement, which is hard to scale up to a high-throughput manner. In this article, a novel and reliable on-chip cell migration detection method integrating surface chemical modification of gold electrodes using self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) and real-time cellular impedance sensing is presented. The SAMs are used to inhibit cell adherence forming an area devoid of cells, which could effectively mimic wounds in a cell monolayer. After a DC electrical signal was applied, the SAMs were desorbed from the electrodes and cells started to migrate. The process of cell migration was monitored by real-time impedance sensing. This demonstrates the first occurrence of integrating cellular impedance sensing and wound-forming with SAMs, which makes cell migration assay being real-time, quantitative and fully automatic. We believe this method could be used for high-throughput anti-migratory drug screening and drug discovery.
A highly sensitive amperometric biosensor based on Pt-incorporated fullerene-like ZnO hybrid nanospheres has been investigated. Pt−ZnO nanospheres (PtZONS) with diameters in the range 50−200 nm have been successfully synthesized by electrodeposition on a glassy carbon electrode (GCE). The Pt nanoparticles in ZnO nanospheres have been identified with high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS). The doped Pt nanoparticles demonstrate the abilities to electrocatalyze the oxidation of hydrogen peroxide and substantially raise the response current. The sensitivity of the PtZONS/GCE to hydrogen peroxide is 147.8 μA μM−1 cm−2, which is much higher than that of a conventional electrode. The PtZONS/GCE was functionalized with cholesterol oxidase (ChOx) by physical adsorption. The enzyme electrode exhibits a very high and reproducible sensitivity of 1886.4 mA M−1 cm−2 to cholesterol with a response time less than 5 s and a linear range from 0.5 to 15 μM. Furthermore, it has been revealed that the biosensor exhibits a good anti-interference ability and favorable stability over relatively long-term storage (more than 5 weeks). All these results strongly suggest that the PtZONS not only enhance the sensitivity to cholesterol but also help to eliminate the interference at low applied potential.
likely to be widely used in industry, agriculture, transportation and so on.Recently, TENG has been demonstrated as an effective approach to convert mechanical energy into electricity, [ 6 ] with performance depending on the coupling of triboelectrifi cation [ 7 ] and electrostatic induction, [ 6a ] through the contact separation or relative sliding between two materials that have opposite tribopolarity. [ 8a ] Compared to the traditional power sources, TENG has the advantages of easy fabrication, excellent durability, high output and low cost. [ 8 ] What is more, TENG can easily harvest almost all types of mechanical energy including human activities, wheels moving, mechanical vibration and so on, which is signifi cantly high enough for the widespread metals corrosion protection.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.