Synthetic Cells from Droplet-Based Microfluidics for Biosensing and Biomedical Applications.

Synthetic cells function as biological mimics of natural cells by mimicking salient features of cells such as metabolism, response to stimuli, gene expression, direct metabolism, and high stability. Droplet-based microfluidic technology presents the opportunity for encapsulating biological functional components in uni-lamellar liposome or polymer droplets. Verified by its success in the fabrication of synthetic cells, microfluidic technology is widely replacing conventional labor-intensive, expensive, and sophisticated techniques justified by its ability to miniaturize and perform batch production operations. In this review, an overview of recent research on the preparation of synthetic cells through droplet-based microfluidics is provided. Different synthetic cells including lipid vesicles (liposome), polymer vesicles (polymersome), coacervate microdroplets, and colloidosomes, are systematically discussed. Efforts are then made to discuss the design of a variety of microfluidic chips for synthetic cell preparation since the combination of microfluidics with bottom-up synthetic biology allows for reproductive and tunable construction of batches of synthetic cell models from simple structures to higher hierarchical structures. The recent advances aimed at exploiting them in biosensors and other biomedical applications are then discussed. Finally, some perspectives on the challenges and future developments of synthetic cell research with microfluidics for biomimetic science and biomedical applications are provided.

Development of a short-form Chinese health literacy scale for low salt consumption (CHLSalt-22) and its validation among hypertensive patients.

BACKGROUND: With the accelerated pace of people's life and the changing dietary patterns, the number of chronic diseases is increasing and occurring at a younger age in today's society. The speedily rising hypertensive patients have become one of the main risk factors for chronic diseases. People should focus on health literacy related to salt consumption and reach a better quality of life. Currently, there is a lack of local assessment tools for low salt consumption in mainland China. OBJECTIVE: To develop a short-form version of the Chinese Health Literacy Scale For Low Salt Consumption instrument for use in mainland China. METHODS: A cross-sectional design was conducted on a sample of 1472 people in Liaoxi, China. Participants completed a sociodemographic questionnaire, the Chinese version of the CHLSalt-22, the measuring change in restriction of salt (sodium) in the diet in hypertensives (MCRSDH-SUST), the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire (BIPQ), and the Benefit-Finding Scales (BFS) to test the hypothesis. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analyses were performed to examine the underlying factor structure of the CHLSalt-22. One month later, 37 patients who participated in the first test were recruited to evaluate the test-retest reliability. RESULTS: The CHLSalt-22 demonstrated adequate internal consistency, good test-retest reliability, satisfactory construct validity, convergent validity and discriminant validity. The CHLSalt-22 count scores were correlated with age, sex, body mass index (BMI), education level, income, occupation, the Measuring Change in Restriction of Salt (sodium) in Diet in Hypertensives (MCRSDH-SUST), the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire (BIPQ), and the Benefit-Finding Scales (BFS). CONCLUSION: The results indicate that the Chinese Health Literacy Scale For Low Salt Consumption (CHLSalt-22) version has good reliability and validity and can be considered a tool to assess health literacy related to salt consumption in health screenings.

A fluorescent probe for hypochlorite with colorimetric and fluorometric characteristics and imaging in living cells.

An excellent fluorescent probe with "turn on" phenomenon for sensitive monitoring hypochlorite (ClO-) was prepared using the mild condensation reaction between coumarin and hydroxylamine (NH2OH). The probe possessed potent selectivity to ClO- with obvious color changes from yellow to light yellow and green to blue fluorescence emission, which could be noticed by the naked eye. Moreover, the probe has been succeeded in imaging ClO- in living A549 cells and thus has the potential prospect in the visual detection of intracellular ClO-.

A fluorescence turn-on probe for rapid monitoring of hypochlorite based on coumarin Schiff base.

A simple Schiff base was prepared by mild condensation reaction between a coumarin fluorescent group and diaminomaleonitrile, and it could serve as an excellent fluorescent probe for fast detection of ClO- with high selectivity and sensitivity. Along with addition of ClO-, this probe fleetingly showed noteworthy "turn-on" phenomenon accompanied by an increase of fluorescence intensity and the change of emission color from yellow to blue. This change of fluorescence is so significant that it can be observed by the naked-eye under a handheld ultraviolet light of 365 nm. However, other common reactive oxygen species exhibited no or very little fluorescent response under the same conditions. The limit of detection of this probe toward ClO- had a sensitivity feature as low as 9.6 nM. On account of these excellent features of short response time, remarkable fluorescence and color signal changes, high sensitivity and selectivity, this probe was effectively used for the fluorescence detection of ClO- in water samples. The values of the relative standard deviation were between 1.41% and 2.91%. More importantly, this probe displays excellent imaging capability in cytoplasm as well as very low cell toxicity and was unambiguously applied to image ClO- in living cells. Graphical abstract A fluorescent probe based on coumarin for detection of ClO- was successfully developed, which can besuccessfully used for the detection of ClO- in living cells and in water sample because of the excellentfeatures including short response time, remarkable fluorescence and color signal changes, high sensitivityand selectivity.

Hypercrosslinked porous polymers hybridized with graphene oxide for water treatment: dye adsorption and degradation.

Hypercrosslinked porous polymer hybridized graphene oxide with polymeric high internal phase emulsions (polyHIPEs/GO) were designed as versatile composites for water treatment. Morphologies, chemical composition and thermal stability of the composites were characterized by SEM, FTIR, XPS, XRD and TGA. Tunable adsorption properties and enhanced visible-light photocatalysis towards organic dyes were achieved by the manipulation of functional groups and the inclusion of Ag3PO4, respectively. The adsorption capacity of polyHIPEs/GO towards cationic methyl blue (MB) and rhodamine B (RB) is 1250.3 and 1054.1 µg g-1, respectively. Aminated polyHIPEs/GO (polyHIPEs(NH2)/GO) possesses an adsorption capacity of 1967.3 µg g-1 to anionic eosin Y (EY). The tandem columns of polyHIPEs(NH2)/GO and polyHIPEs/GO can successively and selectively remove the cationic and anionic dyes in a mixed dye solution. Furthermore, enhanced photodegradation ability was obtained after GO reduction and Ag3PO4 addition on polyHIPEs(NH2)/GO. Results show that 3.5 × 10-5 M of MB, RB and EY can be completely photodegraded by 20 mg of the novel photocatalyst within 20, 40 and 35 min, respectively. This work demonstrates that polyHIPEs/GO exhibits tunable properties for multiply progressive applications in water treatment and catalysis.