Cell surface engineering with functional polymers is an effective strategy to modulate cell activity. Here, a bio‐palladium catalyzed polymerization strategy was developed for in situ synthesis of conjugated polymers on living cell surfaces. Through Sonagashira polymerization, photoactive polyphenyleneethynylene (PPE) is synthesized on the cell surface via cell‐generated bio‐Pd catalyst. The in situ formed PPE is identified by excellent light‐harvest capacity and blue fluorescence on the surfaces of E. coli and C. pyrenoidosa. Besides imaging microbes for tracing the polymerization process, PPE also exhibits enhanced antibacterial activity against E. coli. It can also augment the ATP synthesis of C. pyrenoidosa through enlarging the light absorption and accelerating the cyclic electron transport of the algae. With this bio‐metal catalyzed polymerization method, functional polymers can be synthesized in situ on the living cell surface.

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Artificial regulation of state transition between photosystem I (PSI) and PSII will be a smart and promising way to improve efficiency of natural photosynthesis. In this work, we found that a synthetic light-harvesting polymer [poly(boron-dipyrromethene-co-fluorene) (PBF)] with green light absorption and far-red emission could improve PSI activity of algae Chlorella pyrenoidosa, followed by further upgrading PSII activity to augment natural photosynthesis. For light-dependent reactions, PBF accelerated photosynthetic electron transfer, and the productions of oxygen, ATP and NADPH were increased by 120, 97, and 76%, respectively. For light-independent reactions, the RuBisCO activity was enhanced by 1.5-fold, while the expression levels of rbcL encoding RuBisCO and prk encoding phosphoribulokinase were up-regulated by 2.6 and 1.5-fold, respectively. Furthermore, PBF could be absorbed by the Arabidopsis thaliana to speed up cell mitosis and enhance photosynthesis. By improving the efficiency of natural photosynthesis, synthetic light-harvesting polymer materials show promising potential applications for biofuel production.

Constructing artificial hybrid biosystems, comprising of organisms and organic non‐biological functional material, will afford promising opportunities to achieve brand new or enhanced functions. In this work, a hybrid biosystem is designed and constructed by electrostatically recombining photoactive cationic poly(fluorene‐co‐phenylene) derivative (PFP) with a cyanobacterium (Synechococcus sp. PCC7942, Syne) for enhancing its photosynthesis and regulating exogenous redox state of protein. The light utility efficiency of Syne is significantly improved assisted by the excellent ultraviolet light‐harvesting ability of PFP, which accelerates electron‐transfer rate in non‐cyclic electron transport chain, and further augments the light‐dependent reaction in photosynthesis. As a result, O2, NADPH, and ATP production in the light‐dependent reaction are increased by 52.8%, 47.9%, and 27.2%, respectively. Moreover, the extracellular electron transfer property of Syne is able to realize electronic communication with external circumstances. Specifically, the electrons exported from Syne can reduce exogenous oxidized cytochrome c (Cyt c) and adsorbed PFP has the ability to regulate the reduction degree of Syne to Cyt c. This work reports an ideal design of a conjugated polymer‐based hybrid biosystem, providing a strategy to promote photosynthesis and regulate the redox state of protein.

By using a simple state feedback controller in a three-dimensional chaotic system, a novel 4D chaotic system is derived in this paper. The system state equations are composed of nine terms including only one constant term. Depending on the different values of the constant term, this new proposed system has a line of equilibrium points or no equilibrium points. Compared with other similar chaotic systems, the newly presented system owns more abundant and complicated dynamic properties. What interests us is the observation that if the value of the constant term of the system is nonzero, it has no equilibria, and therefore, the Shil'nikov theorem is not suitable to verify the existence of chaos for the lack of heteroclinic or homoclinic trajectory. However, one-wing, two-wing, three-wing, and four-wing hidden attractors can be obtained from this new system. In addition, various coexisting hidden attractors are obtained and the complex transient transition behaviors are also observed. More interestingly, the unusual and striking dynamic behavior of the coexistence of infinitely many hidden attractors is revealed by selecting the different initial values of the system, which means that extreme multistability arises. The rich and complex hidden dynamic characteristics of this system are investigated by phase portraits, bifurcation diagrams, Lyapunov exponents, and so on. Finally, the new system is implemented by an electronic circuit. A very good agreement is observed between the experimental results and the numerical simulations of the same system on the Matlab platform.

Metrics & More Article RecommendationsCONSPECTUS: Carbon neutrality is increasingly broadly recognized as a vehicle for climate action and sustainable development. Photosynthesis contributes to maintaining a suitable carbon−oxygen balance for survival and plays an irreplaceable role in mitigating the greenhouse effect. However, the energy conversion efficiency of photosynthesis is only about 1%, far below the theoretical maximum. With the ecological demand of carbon neutrality, it is wise and necessary to further improve the efficiency of photosynthesis. Among methods to do so, the most direct and original one is improving the utilization of photosynthetic pigments to the weak absorption region of the spectrum and thus enhancing the solar energy utilization efficiency. This Account summarizes our group's work on constructing conjugated polymer− photosynthetic organism interfaces to augment photosynthetic efficiency. Side chain modification of ionic groups or preparation of nanoparticles makes conjugated polymers water-soluble and electrically charged, which allows them to bind to the surface of photosynthetic microorganisms through electrostatic interactions or be absorbed by plant roots. Owing to the designable and unparalleled light capture and emission capabilities, funnel-like excitation energy transfer mode, and enviable biocompatibility, organic semiconductor conjugated polymers can be used as "artificial antennas" to make up for the lack of natural antenna pigments and expand the photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) range. With this strategy, we achieved enhancement of the photosynthetic efficiency of a broad range of organisms, including oxygenic photosynthetic organisms, from organelle to prokaryotic cyanobacteria, eukaryotic lower plants, and higher plants, as well as anoxygenic photosynthetic organisms. Unlike conventional semiconductors, conjugated polymers have not only electronic conductivity but also ionic conductivity, which is the main means of bioelectrical signal transduction. Therefore, they are able to act as "electron bridges" to accelerate the electron transfer rate at the material−organism interface. On this basis, we introduced conjugated polymers into artificial photosynthesis systems, including biological photovoltaics and artificial carbon sequestration, to increase energy conversion efficiency. These studies open a new frontier for functional studies of conjugated molecules and provide inspirations for the design of photosynthesis systems in the future.

A novel inductance-free nonlinear oscillator circuit with a single bifurcation parameter is presented in this paper. This circuit is composed of a twin-T oscillator, a passive RC network, and a flux-controlled memristor. With an increase in the control parameter, the circuit exhibits complicated chaotic behaviors from double periodicity. The dynamic properties of the circuit are demonstrated by means of equilibrium stability, Lyapunov exponent spectra, and bifurcation diagrams. In order to confirm the occurrence of chaotic behavior in the circuit, an analog realization of the piecewise-linear flux-controlled memristor is proposed, and Pspice simulation is conducted on the resulting circuit.

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