Rod-shaped mesoporous silica nanoparticles exhibit huge
potential
in biomedical research and even show an improvement in drug delivery
efficacy compared to spherical silica. However, their usage may be
restricted by the complex chemical process and high energy consumption.
Here, inspired by sponge, a mild biomineralization method is developed
to fabricate Bacillus-shaped mesoporous silica nanoparticles
(B-MSs) that can be used as vaccine adjuvants. Escherichia
coli displaying protein silicatein (Sα) on its
surface serves as a biological template to induce mineralization of
silica and maintain the appearance of the adjuvants. B-MSs show large
surface area and hierarchical porous structures, allowing a high adsorption
capacity of the model proteins. By introducing electrostatic attraction,
amino-modified B-MSs (B-MSH-NH2) show the slowest
sustained release behavior in vitro compared with
control groups. Moreover, B-MSs exhibit low cytotoxicity and visible
biodegradation behavior, promoting its biological safety in the biomedicine
area. In vivo studies show that Bacillus-shaped B-MSH-NH2 can significantly enhance
immune responses including the secretion levels of both IgG and CD8+ T cells, even higher than that of complete Freund’s
adjuvant. This work offers a good opportunity to gain deep insight
into biomineralization and to design vaccine adjuvants with a new
strategy.
The solvent-free cell wall rupture approach has been proposed as a sustainable pretreatment to determine the overall algal industry efficiency. Herein, Spirulina platensis was selected as a model organism to study ultrasonic-assisted cell wall rupture for multi-output recovery.
The pretreatments displaying superior performance were chosen to study on the ultra-cellular scales. The results indicated that the optimal ultrasonic-assisted dissociation recovery rate was over 90%. The possible rupture forces including the physical forces, the shear forces, and the chemical
attacks, from dissociated OH− and H+ by cleaving hydrogen bonds, peptide bonds and glycolic linkages. This study highlights the ultrasonic-assisted pretreatment with structural insights, which is valuable for developing an integrated, multi-output and sustainable
algal industry.
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