Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a pathogen that causes various infectious diseases through quorum-sensing regulation. Although antibiotics are mainly used to treat P. aeruginosa infections, they cause the emergence of resistant bacteria in humans.

Dental caries is the most prevalent infectious disease and is expensive to manage. Dental biofilms can be eliminated via mechanical treatment or inhibited using antibiotics.

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Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa) is an opportunistic gram-negative pathogen that can cause various infections, particularly in patients with compromised host defenses. P. aeruginosa forms biofilms and produces virulence factors through quorum sensing (QS) network, resulting in resistance to antibiotics. RhlI/RhlR, one of key QS systems in P. aeruginosa, is considered an attractive target for inhibiting biofilm formation and attenuating virulence factors. Several recent studies examined small molecules targeting the RhlI/RhlR system and their in vitro and in vivo biological activities. In this review, RhlR-targeted modulators, including agonists and antagonists, are discussed with particular focus on structure-activity relationship studies and outlook for next-generation anti-biofilm agents.

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Clean water for human consumption is, in many places, a scarce resource, and efficient schemes to purify water are in great demand. Here, we describe a method to dramatically increase the efficiency of a photocatalytic water purification microreactor. Our hierarchical optofluidic microreactor combines the advantages of a nanostructured photocatalyst with light harvesting by base substrates, together with a herringbone micromixer for the enhanced transport of reactants. The herringbone micromixer further improves the reaction efficiency of the nanostructured photocatalyst by generating counter-rotating vortices along the flow direction. In addition, the use of metal-based substrates underneath the nanostructured catalyst increases the purification capacity by improving the light-harvesting efficiency. The photocatalyst is grown from TiO2 as a nanohelix film, which exhibits a large surface-to-volume ratio and a reactive microstructure. We show that the hierarchical structuring with micro- to nanoscale features results in a device with markedly increased photocatalytic activity as compared with a solid unstructured catalyst surface. This is evidenced by the successful degradation of persistent aqueous contaminants, sulfamethoxazole, and polystyrene microplastics. The design can potentially be implemented with solar photocatalysts in flow-through water purification systems.

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