SummaryIn Arabidopsis, the miR171‐GRAS module has been clarified as key player in meristem maintenance. However, the knowledge about its role in fruit crops like tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) remains scarce. We previously identified tomato SlGRAS24 as a target gene of Sly‐miR171. To study the role of this probable transcription factor, we generated transgenic tomato plants underexpressing SlGRAS24, overexpressing SlGRAS24, overexpressing Sly‐miR171 and expressing β‐glucuronidase (GUS) under the SlGRAS24 promoter (proSlGRAS24‐GUS). Plants overexpressing SlGRAS24 (SlGRAS24‐OE) had pleiotropic phenotypes associated with multiple agronomical traits including plant height, flowering time, leaf architecture, lateral branch number, root length, fruit set and development. Many GA/auxin‐related genes were down‐regulated and altered responsiveness to exogenous IAA/NAA or GA 3 application was observed in SlGRAS24‐OE seedlings. Moreover, compromised fruit set and development in SlGRAS24‐OE was also observed. These newly identified phenotypes for SlGRAS24 homologs in tomato were later proved to be caused by impaired pollen sacs and fewer viable pollen grains. At anthesis, the comparative transcriptome results showed altered expression of genes involved in pollen development and hormone signalling. Taken together, our data demonstrate that SlGRAS24 participates in a series of developmental processes through modulating gibberellin and auxin signalling, which sheds new light on the involvement of hormone crosstalk in tomato development.

The SARS-Cov-2 pandemic has spread worldwide during 2020, setting up an uncertain start of this decade. The measures to contain infection taken by many governments have been extremely severe by imposing home lockdown and industrial production shutdown, making this the biggest crisis since the second world war. Additionally, the continuous colonization of wild natural lands may touch unknown virus reservoirs, causing the spread of epidemics. Apart from SARS-Cov-2, the recent history has seen the spread of several viral pandemics such as H2N2 and H3N3 flu, HIV, and SARS, while MERS and Ebola viruses are considered still in a prepandemic phase. Hard nanomaterials (HNMs) have been recently used as antimicrobial agents, potentially being next-generation drugs to fight viral infections. HNMs can block infection at early (disinfection, entrance inhibition) and middle (inside the host cells) stages and are also able to mitigate the immune response. This review is focused on the application of HNMs as antiviral agents. In particular, mechanisms of actions, biological outputs, and limitations for each HNM will be systematically presented and analyzed from a material chemistry point-of-view. The antiviral activity will be discussed in the context of the different pandemic viruses. We acknowledge that HNM antiviral research is still at its early stage, however, we believe that this field will rapidly blossom in the next period.

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Dissipative particle dynamics (DPD) simulation is used to study the effect of pH on the morphological transition in micelles assembled from dirhamnolipids (diRLs), and analyze the pH-driven mechanism and influence factors of micellar surface patterns. At pH < 4.0, various multilayer structures with homogeneous surface patterns are observed, whereas diRLs can self-assemble into novel anisotropic morphologies with phase-separated surface patterns at pH > 7.4, such as patchy spherical micelles, rod-like micelles with helical surface patterns and a lamellar phase with anisotropic surface patterns. The change in a surface pattern results from the diverse molecular arrangement in the course of assembly due to the deprotonation of carboxyl groups. Further studies show that influence factors, such as molecular structure, solvent selectivity and intramolecular interaction, are closely associated with the changes in surface patterns and topological structures. In detail, decreasing the critical packing parameter of rhamnolipids, increasing the solution polarity and weakening the compatibility between rhamnose rings and alkyl chains are all beneficial to the formation of phase-separated surface patterns. Remarkably, a wider variety of surface patterns (randomly anisotropic surface patterns) can be further obtained with the different factors mentioned above. This work is expected to extend the applications of diRLs to advanced functional materials like drug delivery, optoelectronics and nanofiltration membranes.

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Human health can be affected by materials indirectly through exposure to the environment or directly through close contact and uptake. With the ever‐growing use of 2D materials in many applications such as electronics, medical therapeutics, molecular sensing, and energy storage, it has become more pertinent to investigate their impact on the immune system. Dendritic cells (DCs) are highly important, considering their role as the main link between the innate and the adaptive immune system. By using primary human DCs, it is shown that hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), graphene oxide (GO) and molybdenum disulphide have minimal effects on viability. In particular, it is evidenced that hBN and GO increase DC maturation, while GO leads to the release of reactive oxygen species and pro‐inflammatory cytokines. hBN and MoS2 increase T cell proliferation with and without the presence of DCs. hBN in particular does not show any sign of downstream T cell polarization. The study allows ranking of the three materials in terms of inherent toxicity, providing the following trend: GO > hBN ≈ MoS2, with GO the most cytotoxic.

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