Efficient room temperature phosphorescence is observed in natural compounds and polymers such as starch, cellulose, bovine serum albumin (BSA), and some other carbohydrates. Whereas being practically nonluminescent in solutions and TLC plates, they emit bright phosphorescence in the crystalline states with lifetime up to microseconds, exhibiting crystallization-induced phosphorescence (CIP) characteristics. The CIP of these natural products without any conventional chromophores offers a new platform for the exploration of conceptually novel luminogens. room temperature phosphorescence, natural products, cellulose, starch, bovine serum albumin

Antisense Noncoding RNA in the INK4 Locus (ANRIL) is the prime candidate gene at Chr9p21, the welldefined genetic risk locus associated with multiple human diseases including coronary artery disease (CAD), while little is known regarding its role in the pathological processes. Endothelial dysfunction triggers atherosclerotic processes that are causatively linked to CAD. To evaluate the function of ANRIL in human endothelial cells (ECs), we examined ANRIL expression under pathological stimuli and found ANRIL was markedly induced by pro-inflammatory factors. Loss-of-function and chromatin immunoprecipitation approaches revealed that NF-kB mediates TNF-a induced ANRIL expression. RNA sequencing revealed that ANRIL silencing dysregulated expression of inflammatory genes including IL6 and IL8 under TNF-a treatment. We explored the regulatory mechanism of ANRIL on IL6/8 and found that Yin Yang 1 (YY1), an ANRIL binding transcriptional factor revealed by RNA immunoprecipitation, was required for IL6/8 expression under TNF-a treatment. YY1 was enriched at promoter loci of IL6/8 and ANRIL silencing impaired the enrichment, indicating a cooperation between ANRIL and YY1 in the regulation of inflammatory genes. For the first time, we establish the connection between ANRIL and NF-kB pathway and show that ANRIL regulates inflammatory responses through binding with YY1. The newly identified TNF-a-NF-kB-ANRIL/YY1-IL6/8 pathway enhances understanding of the etiology of CAD and provides potential therapeutic target for treatment of CAD.

A strategy towards efficient mechanochromic luminogens with high contrast is developed. The twisted propeller-like conformations and effective intermolecular interactions not only endow the luminogens with AIE characteristics and high efficiency in the crystalline state, but also render them to undergo conformational planarization and disruption in intermolecular interactions upon mechanical stimuli, resulting in remarkable changes in emission wavelength and efficiency.

Hyperbranched polytriazoles with spring-like architectures exhibit the feature of aggregation-induced emission (AIE) due to the high compressibility of polymer spheres from solution to aggregate. Thanks to their AIE effect, the polymer nanoaggregates can detect explosives with superamplification effect.

(4-Biphenylyl)phenyldibenzofulvene is weakly luminescent in the amorphous phase but becomes highly emissive upon crystallization; this unusual crystallization-induced emission enhancement effect allows its emission to be repeatedly switched between dark and bright states by fuming-heating and heating-cooling processes.