Fluorescent Hybrid Material Based on Natural Spider Silk and Carbon Dots for Bioapplication.

Since the outcome of an operation largely depends on the quality of wound healing, it is one of the most challenging stages in surgery. Today, wound closure is mostly undertaken by means of a surgical suture. Good surgical sutures are biocompatible and biodegradable and possess excellent mechanical properties. Preferably, these sutures demonstrate optical activity for bacteria detection as there is a risk of surgical site infections. In this study, a solution, which fulfills all the requirements for manufacturing a multifunctional hybrid material, is proposed. In this work, a method for the in situ modification of spider silk with fluorescent carbon dots has been developed. The basic concept is the use of silk fibers as both the main framework for tissue regeneration and a carbon source during carbon dot synthesis. The resulting hybrid material exhibits strong photoluminescence in the red region of the spectrum (590 nm) when irradiated with blue light (480 nm). The proposed approach potentially allows for simultaneous wound closure and pathogen detection.

Application of extracted ß-glucan from oat for ß-carotene encapsulation.

ABSTRACT: The cell walls of cereals are rich sources of polysaccharide ß-glucan. In this study, the ß-glucan was extracted from oat bran using the hot-water extraction method and dried in a pure powder form. The concentration of the ß-glucan in the extract was determined using the l-cysteine sulfuric acid method. The results showed that the yield of ß-glucan using the hot-water extraction method is the highest compared to its yield achieved by enzymatic, acid, and alkaline methods. In this paper, the usage of the ß-glucan as a coating material for a water-insoluble carotenoid is considered. This study demonstrates for the first time the encapsulation of ß-carotene with modified octanoic acid ß-glucan. It implements to obtain a stable encapsulated polysaccharide-carotenoid system, which has been studied by a set of physicochemical methods and a cytotoxic analysis was performed on the HCT-116 cell line. The SEM image of the resulting encapsulated system is perfectly correlated with the DLS data, which has determined the size of MG capsules at 200 nm. The cytotoxic analysis demonstrates that the cell viability was more than 70%, which indicates its potential using in the food industry.

Bifunctional RNA-Targeting Deoxyribozyme Nanodevice as a Potential Theranostic Agent.

Theranostic approaches rely on simultaneous diagnostic of a disease and its therapy. Here, we designed a DNA nanodevice, which can simultaneously report the presence of a specific RNA target through an increase in fluorescence and cleave it. High selectivity of RNA target recognition under near physiological conditions was achieved. The proposed approach can become a basis for the design of DNA nanomachines and robots for diagnostics and therapy of viral infections, cancer, and genetic disorders.