Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), with a history of thousands of years of clinical practice, is gaining more and more attention and application worldwide. And TCM-based new drug development, especially for the treatment of complex diseases is promising. However, owing to the TCM’s diverse ingredients and their complex interaction with human body, it is still quite difficult to uncover its molecular mechanism, which greatly hinders the TCM modernization and internationalization. Here we developed the first online Bioinformatics Analysis Tool for Molecular mechANism of TCM (BATMAN-TCM). Its main functions include 1) TCM ingredients’ target prediction; 2) functional analyses of targets including biological pathway, Gene Ontology functional term and disease enrichment analyses; 3) the visualization of ingredient-target-pathway/disease association network and KEGG biological pathway with highlighted targets; 4) comparison analysis of multiple TCMs. Finally, we applied BATMAN-TCM to Qishen Yiqi dripping Pill (QSYQ) and combined with subsequent experimental validation to reveal the functions of renin-angiotensin system responsible for QSYQ’s cardioprotective effects for the first time. BATMAN-TCM will contribute to the understanding of the “multi-component, multi-target and multi-pathway” combinational therapeutic mechanism of TCM, and provide valuable clues for subsequent experimental validation, accelerating the elucidation of TCM’s molecular mechanism. BATMAN-TCM is available at http://bionet.ncpsb.org/batman-tcm.
Direct water splitting into H and O using photocatalysts by harnessing sunlight is very appealing to produce storable chemical fuels. Conjugated polymers, which have tunable molecular structures and optoelectronic properties, are promising alternatives to inorganic semiconductors for water splitting. Unfortunately, conjugated polymers that are able to efficiently split pure water under visible light (400 nm) via a four-electron pathway have not been previously reported. This study demonstrates that 1,3-diyne-linked conjugated microporous polymer nanosheets (CMPNs) prepared by oxidative coupling of terminal alkynes such as 1,3,5-tris-(4-ethynylphenyl)-benzene (TEPB) and 1,3,5-triethynylbenzene (TEB) can act as highly efficient photocatalysts for splitting pure water (pH ≈ 7) into stoichiometric amounts of H and O under visible light. The apparent quantum efficiencies at 420 nm are 10.3% and 7.6% for CMPNs synthesized from TEPB and TEB, respectively; the measured solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency using the full solar spectrum can reach 0.6%, surpassing photosynthetic plants in converting solar energy to biomass (globally average ≈0.10%). First-principles calculations reveal that photocatalytic H and O evolution reactions are energetically feasible for CMPNs under visible light irradiation. The findings suggest that organic polymers hold great potential for stable and scalable solar-fuel generation.
Creating ordered two-dimensional (2D) metal-organic framework (MOF) nanosheets has attracted extensive interest. However, it still remains a great challenge to synthesize ultrathin 2D MOF nanosheets with controlled thickness in high yields. In this work, we demonstrate a novel intercalation and chemical exfoliation approach to obtain MOF nanosheets from intrinsically layered MOF crystals. This approach involves two steps: first, layered porphyrinic MOF crystals are intercalated with 4,4'-dipyridyl disulfide through coordination bonding with the metal nodes; subsequently, selective cleavage of the disulfide bond induces exfoliation of the intercalated MOF crystals, leading to individual freestanding MOF nanosheets. This chemical exfoliation process can proceed efficiently at room temperature to produce ultrathin (∼1 nm) 2D MOF nanosheets in ∼57% overall yield. The obtained ultrathin nanosheets exhibit efficient and far superior heterogeneous photocatalysis performance compared with the corresponding bulk MOF.
Novel cell-penetrating peptides self-assemble into ellipsoid-shape nanostructures which amplified the apoptotic stimuli by weakening the VDAC1–HK-II interaction.
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