As far back as the industrial revolution, significant development in technical innovation has succeeded in transforming numerous manual tasks and processes that had been in existence for decades where humans had reached the limits of physical capacity. Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers this same transformative potential for the augmentation and potential replacement of human tasks and activities within a wide range of industrial, intellectual and social applications. The pace of change for this new AI technological age is staggering, with new breakthroughs in algorithmic machine learning and autonomous decision-making, engendering new opportunities for continued innovation. The impact of AI could be significant, with industries ranging from: finance, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, supply chain, logistics and utilities, all potentially disrupted by the onset of AI technologies. The study brings together the collective insight from a number of leading expert contributors to highlight the significant opportunities, realistic assessment of impact, challenges and potential research agenda posed by the rapid emergence of AI within a number of domains: business and management, government, public sector, and science and technology. This research offers significant and timely insight to AI technology and its impact on the future of industry and society in general, whilst recognising the societal and industrial influence on pace and direction of AI development.

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The blockchain has received significant attention from technology focussed researchers, highlighting its perceived impact and emerging disruption potential, but has been slow to engender any significant momentum within the Information Systems (IS) and Information Management (IM) literature. This study approaches the subject through an IS/IM lens developing the key themes from the blockchain based research via a comprehensive review. This analysis of the body of literature highlights that although few commercial grade blockchain applications currently exist, the technology demonstrates significant potential to benefit a number of industry wide use cases. This study expands on this point articulating through each of the key themes to develop a detailed narrative on the numerous potential blockchain applications and future direction of the technology, whilst discussing the many barriers to adoption. The study asserts that blockchain technology has the potential to contribute to a number of the UN Sustainability Development Goals and engender widespread change within a number of established industries and practices.

Lipoplexes formed by the pEGFP-C3 plasmid DNA (pDNA) and lipid mixtures containing cationic gemini surfactant of the 1,2-bis(hexadecyl dimethyl ammonium) alkanes family referred to as C16CnC16, where n=2, 3, 5, or 12, and the zwitterionic helper lipid, 1,2-dioleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphatidylethanolamine (DOPE) have been studied from a wide variety of physical, chemical, and biological standpoints. The study has been carried out using several experimental methods, such as zeta potential, gel electrophoresis, small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), cryo-TEM, gene transfection, cell viability/cytotoxicity, and confocal fluorescence microscopy. As reported recently in a communication (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2011, 133, 18014), the detailed physicochemical and biological studies confirm that, in the presence of the studied series lipid mixtures, plasmid DNA is compacted with a large number of its associated Na+ counterions. This in turn yields a much lower effective negative charge, qpDNA−, a value that has been experimentally obtained for each mixed lipid mixture. Consequently, the cationic lipid (CL) complexes prepared with pDNA and CL/DOPE mixtures to be used in gene transfection require significantly less amount of CL than the one estimated assuming a value of qDNA−=−2. This drives to a considerably lower cytotoxicity of the gene vector. Depending on the CL molar composition, α, of the lipid mixture, and the effective charge ratio of the lipoplex, ρeff, the reported SAXS data indicate the presence of two or three structures in the same lipoplex, one in the DOPE-rich region, other in the CL-rich region, and another one present at any CL composition. Cryo-TEMand SAXS studies with C16CnC16/DOPE-pDNA lipoplexes indicate that pDNA is localized between the mixed lipid bilayers of lamellar structures within a monolayer of ∼2 nm. This is consistent with a highly compacted supercoiled pDNA conformation compared with that of linear DNA. Transfection studies were carried out with HEK293T, HeLa, CHO, U343, and H460 cells. The α and ρeff values for each lipid mixture were optimized on HEK293T cells for transfection, and using these values, the remaining cells were also transfected in absence (-FBS-FBS) and presence (-FBS+FBS) of serum. The transfection efficiency was higher with the CLs of shorter gemini spacers (n=2 or 3). Each formulation expressed GFP on pDNA transfection and confocal fluorescence microscopy corroborated the results. C16C2C16/DOPE mixtures were the most efficient toward transfection among all the lipid mixtures and, in presence of serum, even better than the Lipofectamine2000, a commercial transfecting agent. Each lipid combination was safe and did not show any significant levels of toxicity. Probably, the presence of two coexisting lamellar structures in lipoplexes synergizes the transfection efficiency of the lipid mixtures which are plentiful in the lipoplexes formed by CLs with short spacer (n=2, 3) than those with the long spacer (n=5, 12).

The most important objective of the present study was to explain why cationic lipid (CL)-mediated delivery of plasmid DNA (pDNA) is better than that of linear DNA in gene therapy, a question that, until now, has remained unanswered. Herein for the first time we experimentally show that for different types of CLs, pDNA, in contrast to linear DNA, is compacted with a large amount of its counterions, yielding a lower effective negative charge. This feature has been confirmed through a number of physicochemical and biochemical investigations. This is significant for both in vitro and in vivo transfection studies. For an effective DNA transfection, the lower the amount of the CL, the lower is the cytotoxicity. The study also points out that it is absolutely necessary to consider both effective charge ratios between CL and pDNA and effective pDNA charges, which can be determined from physicochemical experiments.

Lipoplex-type nanoaggregates prepared from pEGFP-C3 plasmid DNA (pDNA) and mixed liposomes, with a gemini cationic lipid (CL) [1,2-bis(hexadecyl imidazolium) alkanes], referred as (C16Im)2Cn (where Cn is the alkane spacer length, n = 2, 3, 5, or 12, between the imidazolium heads) and DOPE zwitterionic lipid, have been analyzed by zeta potential, gel electrophoresis, SAXS, cryo-TEM, fluorescence anisotropy, transfection efficiency, fluorescence confocal microscopy, and cell viability/cytotoxicity experiments to establish a structure-biological activity relationship. The study, carried out at several mixed liposome compositions, α, and effective charge ratios, ρeff, of the lipoplex, demonstrates that the transfection of pDNA using CLs initially requires the determination of the effective charge of both. The electrochemical study confirms that CLs with a delocalizable positive charge in their headgroups yield an effective positive charge that is 90% of their expected nominal one, while pDNA is compacted yielding an effective negative charge which is only 10-25% than that of the linear DNA. SAXS diffractograms show that lipoplexes formed by CLs with shorter spacer (n = 2, 3, or 5) present three lamellar structures, two of them in coexistence, while those formed by CL with longest spacer (n = 12) present two additional inverted hexagonal structures. Cryo-TEM micrographs show nanoaggregates with two multilamellar structures, a cluster-type (at low α value) and a fingerprint-type, that coexist with the cluster-type at moderate α composition. The optimized transfection efficiency (TE) of pDNA, in HEK293T, HeLa, and H1299 cells was higher using lipoplexes containing gemini CLs with shorter spacers at low α value. Each lipid formulation did not show any significant levels of toxicity, the reported lipoplexes being adequate DNA vectors for gene therapy and considerably better than both Lipofectamine 2000 and CLs of the 1,2-bis(hexadecyl ammnoniun) alkane series, recently reported.

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