Water-compatible Janus molecularly imprinted particles with mouth-like opening: Rapid removal of pharmaceuticals from hospital effluents.

Pharmaceuticals in hospital effluents, often discharged into the public sewage network without sufficient treatment, have shown negative impacts to the human health and aquatic environment. However, the conventional adsorbents used to remove these micropollutants had several deficiencies, including slow uptake kinetics and poor selectivity. To overcome these challenges, water-compatible Janus MIP particles (J-MIPs) with mouth-like openings were synthesized using seeded interfacial polymerization in this work. Among the series of J-MIPs, the selected J-MIP3 showed fast binding kinetics (∼40 s) towards the target pollutant. The theoretical and instrumental analysis suggested that the electrostatic interaction, hydrogen bond and hydrophobic reaction constituted the dominant mechanism for J-MIP3's recognition of target pharmaceutical. Selectivity and robustness tests indicated that the synthetic method was promising in practical application. Finally, the feasibility of the J-MIP3 fixed-bed column in the rapid removal of propranolol (PRO) from hospital effluents was successfully demonstrated. Compared to the activated carbon fixed-bed column, the J-MIP3 fixed-bed column showed at least 7-fold enhancement in its treatment efficiency. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that the accelerated mass transfer and fast removal of the pharmaceutical from wastewater have been achieved by the synthetic receptor with asymmetric structure. We believe the present study will open new avenues for the development of multi-functional molecularly imprinted polymers as well as Janus materials in environmental science.

Fourier transform infrared and Raman-based biochemical profiling of different grades of pure foetal-type hepatoblastoma.

The biomolecular events resulting from the progression of hepatoblastoma remain to be elucidated. Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) and Raman spectroscopies are capable of noninvasively and accurately capturing the biochemical properties of biological tissue from its pathological status. Our aim was to probe critial biomolecular changes of liver accompanying the progression of pure foetal hepatoblastoma (PFH) by FTIR and Raman spectroscopies. Herein, biochemical alterations were both evident in the FTIR spectra (regions of 3100-2800 cm-1 and 1800-900 cm-1 ) and the Raman spectra (region of 1800-400 cm-1 ) among normal, borderline and malignant liver tissues. Compared with normal tissues, the ratios of protein-to-lipid, α-helix-to-ß-sheet, RNA-to-DNA, CH3 methyl-to-CH2 methylene, glucose-to-phospholipids, and unsaturated-to-saturated lipids intensities were significantly higher in malignant tissues, while the ratios of RNA-to-Amide II, DNA-to-Amide II, glycogen-to-cholesterol and Amide I-to-Amide II intensities were remarkably lower. These biochemical alterations in the transition from normal to malignant have profound implications not only for cyto-pathological classification but also for molecular understanding of PFH progression. The successive changes of the spectral characteristics have been shown to be consistent with the development of PFH, indicating that FTIR and Raman spectroscopies are excellent tools to interrogate the biochemical features of different grades of PFH.

4-Nonylphenol effects on rat testis and sertoli cells determined by spectrochemical techniques coupled with chemometric analysis.

Herein, vibrational spectroscopy has been applied for qualitative identification of biomolecular alterations that occur in cells and tissues following chemical treatment. Towards this end, we combined attenuated total reflection Fourier-transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) and Raman spectroscopy to assess testicular toxicology after 4-nonylphenol (NP) exposure, an estrogenic endocrine disruptor affecting testicular function in rats and other species. Rats aged 21, 35 or 50 days received NP at intra-peritoneal doses of 0, 25, 50 or 100 mg/kg for 20 consecutive days. Primary Sertoli cells (SCs) were treated with NP at various concentrations (0, 2.5, 5, 10 or 20 µM) for 12 h. Post-exposure, testicular cells, interstitial tissue and SCs were interrogated respectively using spectrochemical techniques coupled with multivariate analysis. Distinct biomolecular segregation between the NP-exposed samples vs. control were observed based on infrared (IR) spectral regions of 3200-2800 cm-1 and 1800-900 cm-1, and the Raman spectral region of 1800-900 cm-1. For in vivo experiments, the main wavenumbers responsible for segregation varied significantly among the three age classes. The main IR and Raman band differences between NP-exposed and control groups were observed for Amide (proteins), lipids and DNA/RNA. An interesting finding was that the peptide aggregation level, Amide Ӏ-to-Amide II ratio, and phosphate-to-carbohydrate ratio were considerably reduced in ex vivo NP-exposed testicular cells or SCs in vitro. This study demonstrates that ATR-FTIR and Raman spectroscopy techniques can be applied towards analysing NP-induced testicular biomolecular alterations.