Photobiological hydrogen production is of great importance because of its promise for generating clean renewable energy. In nature, green algae cannot produce hydrogen as a result of the extreme sensitivity of hydrogenase to oxygen. However, we find that silicification-induced green algae aggregates can achieve sustainable photobiological hydrogen production even under natural aerobic conditions. The core-shell structure of the green algae aggregates creates a balance between photosynthetic electron generation and hydrogenase activity, thus allowing the production of hydrogen. This finding provides a viable pathway for the solar-driven splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen to develop green energy alternatives by using rationally designed cell-material complexes.

Autophagy is involved in many human diseases, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and virus infection, including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis C virus (HCV), influenza A virus (IAV) and coxsackievirus B3/B4 (CVB3/B4), so a drug screening model targeting autophagy may be very useful for the therapy of these diseases. In our study, we established a drug screening model based on the inhibition of the dissociation of Beclin1-Bcl2 heterodimer, an important negative regulator of autophagy, using bimolecular fluorescence complementation (BiFC) technique for developing novel autophagy inhibitors and anti-IAV agents. From 86 examples of traditional Chinese medicines, we found Syzygium aromaticum L. had the best activity. We then determined the anti-autophagy and anti-IAV activity of eugenol, the major active compound of Syzygium aromaticum L., and explored its mechanism of action. Eugenol could inhibit autophagy and IAV replication, inhibited the activation of ERK, p38MAPK and IKK/NF-κB signal pathways and antagonized the effects of the activators of these pathways. Eugenol also ameliorated the oxidative stress and inhibited the expressions of autophagic genes. We speculated that the mechanism underlying might be that eugenol inhibited the oxidative stress and the activation of ERK1/2, p38MAPK and IKK/NF-κB pathways, subsequently inhibited the dissociation of Beclin1-Bcl2 heterodimer and autophagy, and finally impaired IAV replication. These results might conversely display the reasonableness of the design of our screening model. In conclusion, we have established a drug screening model for developing novel autophagy inhibitor, and find eugenol as a promising inhibitor for autophagy and IAV infection.

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have been phenomenologically classified into long and short populations based on whether the observed duration is longer or shorter than two seconds 1 .Multi-wavelength and multi-messenger observations in recent years have revealed that in general long GRBs originate from massive star core collapse events 2 , whereas short GRBs originate from binary neutron star mergers 3 . It has been known that the duration criterion is sometimes unreliable, and multi-wavelength criteria are needed to identify the physical origin of a particular GRB 4 . Some apparently long GRBs have been suggested to have a neutron star merger origin 5 , whereas some apparently short GRBs have been attributed to genuinely long GRBs 6 whose short, bright emission is above the detector's sensitivity threshold. Still, there has been no known case that a GRB is genuinely short but originates from death of a massive star. Here we report the comprehensive analysis of the multi-wavelength data of a bright short GRB 200826A. This burst has a sharp 1-second spike, which is not part of an underlying long-duration event. Its other observational properties are, however,

We present deep optical photometry of the afterglow of gamma-ray burst (GRB) 041006 and its associated hypernova obtained over 65 days after detection (55 R-band epochs on 10 different nights). Our early data (t < 4 days) joined with published GCN data indicates a steepening decay, approaching F ν ∝ t −0.6 at early times (t ≪ 1 day) and F ν ∝ t −1.3 at late times. The break at t b = 0.16 ± 0.04 days is the earliest reported jet break among all GRB afterglows. During our first night, we obtained 39 exposures spanning 2.15 hours from 0.62 to 0.71 days after the burst that reveal a smooth afterglow, with an rms deviation of 0.024 mag from the local power-law fit, consistent with photometric errors. After t ∼ 4 days, the decay slows considerably, and the light 1 Based on data from the MMTO 6.5m telescope, the 1.8m Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope, the Magellan 6.5m Baade and Clay telescopes, and the Keck II 10m telescope -2curve remains approximately flat at R ∼ 24 mag for a month before decaying by another magnitude to reach R ∼ 25 mag two months after the burst. This "bump" is well-fitted by a k-corrected light curve of SN1998bw, but only if stretched by ×1.38 in time. In comparison with the other GRB-related SNe bumps, GRB 041006 stakes out new parameter space for GRB/SNe, with a very bright and significantly stretched late-time SN light curve. Within a small sample of fairly well observed GRB/SN bumps, we see a hint of a possible correlation between their peak luminosity and their "stretch factor", broadly similar to the well-studied Phillips relation for the type Ia supernovae.