A colorimetric sensing strategy based on chitosan-stabilized platinum nanoparticles for quick detection of α-glucosidase activity and inhibitor screening.

α-Glucosidase (α-Glu) is implicated in the progression and pathogenesis of type II diabetes (T2D). In this study, we developed a rapid colorimetric technique using platinum nanoparticles stabilized by chitosan (Ch-PtNPs) to detect α-Glu activity and its inhibitor. The Ch-PtNPs facilitate the conversion of 3,3',5,5'-tetramethylbenzidine (TMB) into oxidized TMB (oxTMB) in the presence of dissolved O2. The catalytic hydrolysis of 2-O-α-D-glucopyranosyl-L-ascorbic acid (AA-2G) by α-Glu produces ascorbic acid (AA), which reduces oxTMB to TMB, leading to the fading of the blue color. However, the presence of α-Glu inhibitors (AGIs) hinders the generation of AA, allowing Ch-PtNPs to re-oxidize colorless TMB back to blue oxTMB. This unique phenomenon enables the colorimetric detection of α-Glu activity and AGIs. The linear range for α-Glu was found to be 0.1-1.0 U mL-1 and the detection limit was 0.026 U mL-1. Additionally, the half-maximal inhibition value (IC50) for acarbose, an α-Glu inhibitor, was calculated to be 0.4769 mM. Excitingly, this sensing platform successfully detected α-Glu activity in human serum samples and effectively screened AGIs. These promising findings highlight the potential application of the proposed strategy in clinical diabetes diagnosis and drug discovery.

Multiplex modification of Yarrowia lipolytica for enhanced erythritol biosynthesis from glycerol through modularized metabolic engineering.

Erythritol is a novelty 4-carbon sugar polyol and has great potential to be used as the precursor of some platform chemicals. The increasing cost of glucose poses researchers shifting insights to the cheaper biodiesel raw materials. Herein, we engineered a non-degradation, non-byproducts Yarrowia lipolytica for the erythritol production with high-titer from glycerol. Initially, the degradation and competition modules were blocked by URA3 counter-selection marker. Subsequently, a shortened biosynthetic pathway was explored to elevate its synthetic flux by multi-modules combination expression of functional genes. Furthermore, a screened glycerol transporter ScFPS1 was integrated into ERY6 genome to promote the glycerol uptake. The constructed strain ERY8 produced 176.66 g/L erythritol in the 5-L bioreactor with a yield and productivity of 0.631 g/g and 1.23 g/L/h, respectively, which achieved the highest fermentation production efficiency till date. This study proposed a novel multi-modules combination strategy for effectively engineering Y. lipolytica to produce erythritol using glycerol.

Harmonics of Parton Saturation in Lepton-Jet Correlations at the Electron-Ion Collider.

Parton saturation is one of the most intriguing phenomena in the high energy nuclear physics research frontier, especially in the upcoming era of the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC). The lepton-jet correlation in deep inelastic scattering provides us with a new gateway to the parton saturation at the EIC. In particular, we demonstrate that azimuthal angle anisotropies of the lepton-jet correlation are sensitive to the strength of the saturation momentum in the EIC kinematic region. In contrast to the predictions based on the collinear framework calculation, significant nuclear modification of the anisotropies is observed when we compare the saturation physics results in e+p and e+Au scatterings. By measuring these harmonic coefficients at the EIC, one can conduct quantitative analyses in different collisional systems and unveil compelling evidence for saturation effects.

Simvastatin Reduces NETosis to Attenuate Severe Asthma by Inhibiting PAD4 Expression.

Objective: Patients with severe asthma respond poorly to corticosteroids, and their care accounts for more than 60% of the total costs attributed to asthma. Neutrophils form neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs), which play a crucial role in severe asthma. Statins have shown anti-inflammatory effects by reducing NETosis. In this study, we investigate if simvastatin can attenuate severe asthma by reducing NETosis and the underlying mechanism. Methods: Mice were concomitantly sensitized with ovalbumin (OVA), house dust mite (HDM), and lipopolysaccharide (LPS) during sensitization to establish a mouse model of severe asthma with neutrophil predominant inflammation (OVA+LPS mice) and treated with or without simvastatin. In inflammatory response, proportions of Th2, Th17, and Treg cells in lung tissue were detected by flow cytometry, and the levels of cytokines, dsDNA, and MPO-DNA in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) were analyzed by ELISA. Citrullinated histone H3 (CitH3) and peptidyl arginine deiminase 4 (PAD4) in lung tissue were determined by Western blot and immunofluorescence imaging. PAD4 mRNA was determined by quantitative PCR (qPCR). HL-60 cells were differentiated into neutrophil-like cells by 1.25% DMSO. The neutrophil-like cells were treated with or without LPS, and simvastatin was then stimulated with PMA. CitH3 and PAD4 expressions were determined. Results: Sensitization with OVA, HDM, and LPS resulted in neutrophilic inflammation and the formation of NETs in the lungs. Simvastatin treatment reduced the inflammation score, cytokine levels, total cells, and neutrophil counts in the BALF and reduced proportions of Th2 and Th17 but increased Treg cells in lungs of OVA+LPS mice. Simvastatin-treated OVA+LPS mice show reduced NET formation in BALF and lung tissue compared to control mice. Adoptive transfer of neutrophils was sufficient to restore NETosis and neutrophilic inflammation in simvastatin-treated OVA+LPS mice. Simvastatin reduced PAD4 mRNA and protein expression in lung tissues and neutrophils isolated from lungs of OVA+LPS mice and consequent NET formation. In vitro, simvastatin reduced LPS-induced PAD4 upregulation and NETosis in HL-60-differentiated neutrophil-like cells. Furthermore, PAD4-overexpressed lentiviral transduction was sufficient to restore PAD4 protein expression and NETosis in simvastatin-treated HL-60-differentiated neutrophil-like cells. Conclusions: Simvastatin reduces Th17-mediated neutrophilic inflammation and airway hyperreactivity by reducing PAD4 expression and inhibiting NETosis in a mouse model of severe asthma. Severe asthmatic patients with high levels of circulating NETs or sputum NETs may show improved responses to statin treatment.

Pursuing the Precision Study for Color Glass Condensate in Forward Hadron Productions.

With the tremendous accomplishments of RHIC and the LHC experiments and the advent of the future electron-ion collider on the horizon, the quest for compelling evidence of the color glass condensate (CGC) has become one of the most aspiring goals in the high energy quantum chromodynamics research. Pursuing this question requires developing the precision test of the CGC formalism. By systematically implementing the threshold resummation, we significantly improve the stability of the next-to-leading-order calculation in CGC for forward rapidity hadron productions in pp and pA collisions, especially in the high p_{T} region, and obtain reliable descriptions of all existing data measured at RHIC and the LHC across all p_{T} regions. Consequently, this technique can pave the way for the precision studies of the CGC next-to-leading-order predictions by confronting them with a large amount of precise data.

Anisotropy in Dijet Production in Exclusive and Inclusive Processes.

We investigate the effect of soft gluon radiations on the azimuthal angle correlation between the total and relative momenta of two jets in inclusive and exclusive dijet processes. We show that the final state effect induces a sizable cos(2ϕ) anisotropy due to gluon emissions near the jet cones. The phenomenological consequences of this observation are discussed for various collider experiments, including diffractive processes in ultraperipheral pA and AA collisions, inclusive and diffractive dijet production at the EIC, and inclusive dijet in pp and AA collisions at the LHC.

Momentum Anisotropy of Leptons from Two-Photon Processes in Heavy-Ion Collisions.

We investigate the azimuthal angular correlation between the lepton transverse momentum P_{⊥} and the impact parameter b_{⊥} in noncentral heavy-ion collisions, where the leptons are produced through two-photon scattering. Among the Fourier harmonic coefficients, a significant v_{4} asymmetry is found for the typical kinematics at RHIC and LHC with a mild dependence on the P_{⊥}, whereas v_{2} is power suppressed by the lepton mass over P_{⊥}. This unique prediction, if confirmed from the experiments, shall provide crucial information on the production mechanism for the dilepton in two-photon processes.

Elliptic Flow of Heavy Quarkonia in pA Collisions.

Using the dilute-dense factorization in the color glass condensate framework, we investigate the azimuthal angular correlation between a heavy quarkonium and a charged light hadron in proton-nucleus collisions. We extract the second harmonic v_{2}, commonly known as the elliptic flow, with the light hadron as the reference. This particular azimuthal angular correlation between a heavy meson and a light hadron was first measured at the LHC recently. The experimental results indicate that the elliptic flows for heavy flavor mesons (J/ψ and D^{0}) are almost as large as those for light hadrons. Our calculation demonstrates that this result can be naturally interpreted as an initial state effect due to the interaction between the incoming partons from the proton and the dense gluons inside the target nucleus. Since the heavy quarkonium v_{2} exhibits a weak mass dependence according to our calculation, we predict that the heavy quarkonium ϒ should have a similar elliptic flow as compared to that of the J/ψ, which can be tested in future measurements.

Acoplanarity of a Lepton Pair to Probe the Electromagnetic Property of Quark Matter.

We investigate the P_{T}-broadening effects in dilepton production through photon-photon scattering in heavy ion collisions. The QED multiple interaction effect with the medium is found to be consistent with the recent observation of a low transverse momentum lepton pair from the ATLAS Collaboration at the LHC. We further comment on the magnetic broadening effect and point out a number of ways to disentangle these two mechanisms. In particular, the rapidity dependence of the P_{T}-broadening effect provides a unique probe to the magnetic effect.

Co-metal-organic-frameworks with pure uniform crystal morphology prepared via Co2+ exchange-mediated transformation from Zn-metallogels for luminol catalysed chemiluminescence.

Cation exchange-mediated transformation from Zn-metallogels (MOGs), which was a mild facile strategy relative to the demanding hydrothermal method, was employed to develop Co2+ metal-organic frameworks (Co-MOFs) at room temperature. The obtained Co-MOFs was of uniform octahedral morphology and possessed high activity to catalyze luminol chemiluminescence without extra oxidants. By adding cysteine, the CL emission of luminol-Co-MOFs system was further enhanced. Based on this phenomenon, Co-MOFs was utilized to build a practical sensing platform for cysteine determination. Under the optimized conditions, the relative CL intensity (ΔI) was proportional to the concentration of cysteine in the range of 2-10µM, and the detection limit was 0.49µM (3S/N). Moreover, the established method was applied to the determination of cysteine in commercially available pharmaceutical injections.

Probing the Small-x Gluon Tomography in Correlated Hard Diffractive Dijet Production in Deep Inelastic Scattering.

We investigate the close connection between the quantum phase space Wigner distribution of small-x gluons and the color dipole scattering amplitude, and we propose studying it experimentally in the hard diffractive dijet production at the planned electron-ion collider. The angular correlation between the nucleon recoiled momentum and the dijet transverse momentum probes the nontrivial correlation in the phase space Wigner distribution. This experimental study not only provides us with three-dimensional tomographic pictures of gluons inside high energy protons-it gives a unique and interesting signal for the small-x dynamics with QCD evolution effects.

Towards the test of saturation physics beyond leading logarithm.

We present results from the first next-to-leading-order (NLO) numerical analysis of forward hadron production in pA and dA collisions in the small-x saturation formalism. Using parton distributions and fragmentation functions at NLO, as well as the dipole amplitude from the solution to the Balitsky-Kovchegov equation with running coupling, together with the NLO corrections to the hard coefficients, we obtain a good description of the available RHIC data in dAu collisions. In the large p⊥ region beyond the saturation scale, we find that the NLO correction becomes dominant and negative, which indicates that other physics beyond NLO becomes important and should also be taken into account. Furthermore, we make predictions for forward hadron production in pPb collisions at the LHC. This analysis not only incorporates the important NLO corrections for all partonic channels, but also reduces the renormalization scale dependence and helps to significantly reduce the theoretical uncertainties. It therefore provides a precise test of saturation physics beyond the leading logarithmic approximation.

Sudakov resummation in the small-x saturation formalism.

Through an explicit calculation of massive scalar particle (e.g., Higgs boson) production in high energy pA collisions up to one-loop order, we demonstrate, for the first time, that the Sudakov-type logarithms in hard processes in the small-x saturation formalism can be systematically separated from the small-x logarithms. The generic feature of the Sudakov logarithms and all order resummation is derived. This calculation shall provide us deep insights into the understanding of factorizations in the saturation formalism. We further comment on the phenomenological implications in the LHC energy regime and extension to other hard processes in small-x calculations.

One-loop factorization for inclusive hadron production in p-A collisions in the saturation formalism.

We demonstrate the QCD factorization for inclusive hadron production in p-A collisions in the saturation formalism at one-loop order, with explicit calculation of both real and virtual gluon radiation diagrams. In particular, we find that the cross section can be written into a factorization form in the coordinate space at the next-to-leading order, while the naive form of the convolution in the transverse momentum space does not hold. The collinear divergences associated with the incoming parton distribution of the nucleon and the outgoing fragmentation function of the final-state hadron, as well as the rapidity divergence with small-x dipole gluon distribution of the nucleus are factorized into the splittings of the associated parton distribution and fragmentation functions and the energy evolution of the dipole gluon distribution function. The hard coefficient function is evaluated at one-loop order, and contains no divergence.

QCD resummation for single spin asymmetries.

We study the transverse momentum dependent factorization for single spin asymmetries in Drell-Yan and semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering processes at one-loop order. The next-to-leading order hard factors are calculated in the Ji-Ma-Yuan factorization scheme. We further derive the QCD resummation formalisms for these observables following the Collins-Soper-Sterman method. The results are expressed in terms of the collinear correlation functions from initial and/or final state hadrons coupled with the Sudakov form factor containing all order soft-gluon resummation effects. The scheme-independent coefficients are calculated up to one-loop order.

k(t) factorization for hard processes in nuclei.

Two widely proposed k(t)-dependent gluon distributions in the small-x saturation regime are investigated using two-particle back-to-back correlations in high energy scattering processes. The Weizsäcker-Williams gluon distribution, interpreted as the number density of gluon inside nucleus, is studied in the quark-antiquark jet correlation in deep inelastic scattering. On the other hand, the unintegrated gluon distribution, defined as the Fourier transform of the color-dipole cross section, is probed in the direct photon-jet correlation in pA collisions.

Nonuniversality of transverse momentum dependent parton distributions at small x.

We study the universality issue of the transverse momentum dependent parton distributions at small x, by comparing the initial and final state interaction effects in di-jet-correlations in pA collisions with those in deep inelastic lepton-nucleus scattering. We demonstrate the nonuniversality by performing an explicit calculation in a particular model where the multiple gauge boson exchange contributions are summed up to all orders. We comment on the implications of our results on the theoretical interpretation of dihadron correlation in dA collisions in terms of the saturation phenomena in deep inelastic lepton-nucleus scattering.