Lysine succinylation analysis reveals the effect of Sirt5 on synovial fibroblasts in rheumatoid arthritis patients.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease with complex etiology, and its pathological mechanism remains unclear. Our aim was to explore the effect of protein succinylation on RA by silencing Sirt5, sequencing succinylated proteins, and analyzing the sequencing results to identify potential biomarkers. We wanted to gain a clearer understanding of RA pathogenesis, quantitative assessment of succinylated proteins in Fibroblast-like synoviocytes (FLS) from RA patients using liquid chromatography- tandem mass spectrometry and enrichment analysis investigated using Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG). A total of 679 proteins and 2,471 lysine succinylation sites were found in RA patients, and 436 differentially expressed proteins and 1,548 differentially expressed succinylation sites were identified. Among them, 48 succinylation sites were upregulated in 38 proteins and 144 succinylation sites were downregulated in 82 proteins. Bioinformatics showed that succinylated proteins were significantly enriched in amino and fatty acid metabolisms. Results indicated that Sirt5 can affect various biological processes involved in RA FLSs, and succinylation caused by silencing Sirt5 plays a major role in RA progression. This study provides further understanding of RA pathogenesis and may facilitate searching for potential RA biomarkers.

Improved Electrochemical Performance of Spinel LiNi0.5Mn1.5O4 Cathode Materials with a Dual Structure Triggered by LiF at Low Calcination Temperature.

High-voltage spinel LiNi0.5Mn1.5O4 (LNMO), which has the advantages of high energy density, low cost, environmental friendliness, and being cobalt-free, is considered one of the most promising cathode materials for the next generation of power lithium-ion batteries. However, the side reaction at the interface between the LNMO cathode material and electrolyte usually causes a low specific capacity, poor rate, and poor cycling performance. In this work, we propose a facilitated method to build a well-tuned dual structure of LiF coating and F- doping LNMO cathode material via simple calcination of LNMO with LiF at low temperatures. The experimental results and DFT analysis demonstrated that the powerful interface protection due to the LiF coating and the higher lithium diffusion coefficient caused by F- doping effectively improved the electrochemical performance of LNMO. The optimized LNMO-1.3LiF cathode material presents a high discharge capacity of 140.3 mA h g-1 at 1 C and 118.7 mA h g-1 at 10 C. Furthermore, the capacity is retained at 75.4% after the 1000th cycle at 1 C. Our research provides a concrete guidance on how to effectively boost the electrochemical performance of LNMO cathode materials.

High-efficiency solution-processed OLED based on trivalent europium complex by modifying the composition of the multiple-host system.

In this work, di-[4-(N,N-ditolylamino)-phenyl]cyclohexane (TAPC); 4,4',4″-tri (9-carbazoyl)triphenylamine (TcTa); 9-(4-tert-butylphenyl)-3,6-bis(triphenylsilyl)-9H-carbazole (CzSi); and 1,3,5-tri (m-pyrid-3-yl-phenyl)benzene (TmPyPB) were used to constitute the multiple-host system and fabricate solution-processed organic light-emitting diodes (s-OLEDs) with europium complex Eu(DBM)3Phen (DBM, 1,3-diphenylpropane-1,3-dione; Phen,1,10-phenanthroline) as emitter. In order to determine the optimal composition of the multiple-host system, a series of devices with different light-emitting layers (EMLs) were fabricated and compared. Experimental results revealed that removing TmPyPB out of the multiple-host system greatly reduces the turn-on voltage, whereas the addition of TcTa to the multiple-host system helps facilitate the transfer of holes from TAPC to Eu(DBM)3Phen molecules, thus increasing the recombination probability of carriers on emitter molecules. Finally, high performance solution-processed red OLED (turn-on voltage of 3.8 V) based on the europium complex doped multiple-host system obtained the maximum current efficiency of 2.07 cd A-1, power efficiency of 1.54 lm W-1, external quantum efficiency of 1.2%, and brightness of 945 cd m-2.

Highly Efficient Solution-Processed Blue Phosphorescent Organic Light-Emitting Diodes Based on Co-Dopant and Co-Host System.

The low-lying HOMO level of the blue emitter and the interfacial miscibility of organic materials result in inferior hole injection, and long exciton lifetime leads to triplet-triplet annihilation (TTA) and triplet-polaron annihilation (TPA), so the efficiencies of blue phosphorescent organic light-emitting diodes (PhOLEDs) are still unsatisfactory. Herein, we design co-host and co-dopant structures to improve the efficiency of blue PhOLEDs by means of solution processing. TcTa acts as hole transport ladder due to its high-lying HOMO level, and bipolar mCPPO1 helps to balance carriers' distribution and weaken TPA. Besides the efficient FIr6, which acts as the dominant blue dopant, FCNIrPic was introduced as the second dopant, whose higher HOMO level accelerates hole injection and high triplet energy facilitates energy transfer. An interesting phenomenon caused by microcavity effect between anode and cathode was observed. With increasing thickness of ETL, peak position of electroluminescence (EL) spectrum red shifts gradually. Once the thickness of ETL exceeded 140 nm, emission peak blue-shifts went back to its original position. Finally, the maximum current efficiency (CE), power efficiency (PE), and external quantum efficiency (EQE) of blue phosphorescent organic light-emitting diode (PhOLED) went up to 20.47 cd/A, 11.96 lm/W, and 11.62%, respectively.

Single component white-OLEDs derived from tris(ß-diketonato) europium(III) complexes bearing the large bite angle N

Two new organo-europium complexes (OEuCs) [Eu(tfac)3(TB-Im)] (Eu1) [Eu(hfac)3(TB-Im)] (Eu2) incorporating fluorinated (hexafluoroacetylacetone; Hhfaa) or hemi-fluorinated (trifluoroacetylacetone; Htfac) ß-diketones together with the large bite angle N^N ligand (2-(4-thiazolyl)benzimidazole; TB-Im) have been synthesized and characterized. The structure of the complexes has been established by single crystal X-ray diffraction (SC-XRD) analysis and shows that the coordination sphere is composed of a EuO6N2 core (octacoordinated). Continuous shape measures (CShMs) revealed that the geometry around Eu(III) is trigonal dodecahedral with approximate D2d-symmetry. Efficient red emission is observed for both the complexes in solution with a fairly large photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY (QLEu) = 39.00-47.00%). Furthermore, by utilizing the experimental photoluminescence (PL) data and theoretical modelling employing density functional theory (DFT) in conjunction with LUMPAC, energy transfer (ET) and back energy transfer rates were calculated, and an ET mechanism for the sensitized PL is proposed and discussed in detail. Finally, the complexes were used as an emitting layer (EML) to fabricate 20 organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) by varying the doping concentration. Interestingly, both the complex-based OLEDs at 4 wt% doping concentration display white electroluminescence (EL) with the brightness (B) = 100.5-364.1 cd m-2 at very low turn-on voltage (Vturn-on) = 3.9-4.6 V. The overall electroluminescence performance of Eu1 and Eu2 is higher than that of the reported europium based single component white-OLEDs.

Synergistic Effect of Mn3+ Formation-Migration and Oxygen Loss on the Near Surface and Bulk Structural Changes in Single Crystalline Lithium-Rich Oxides.

Micron-sized single crystal particles could be used to intensify structural changes between bulk and surface area during the charge-discharge process owing to their long-range order. In this study, the effects of Mn3+ formation-migration and oxygen loss on the structure change from the bulk side to the near surface in single crystalline Li1.2Mn0.54Ni0.13Co0.13O2 were decoupled by regulating the voltage windows of 2-4.5, 3-4.8, and 2-4.8 V because Mn3+ formation-migration and oxygen loss mainly occurred below 3 V and beyond 4.5 V, respectively. It is found that oxygen vacancies and phase transformation can be retarded by suppressing the formation-migration of Mn3+. Finally, we also conducted an important insight that boron ion doping in tetrahedral site could be used to suppress Mn3+ migration from octahedral site to tetrahedral site and disrupt the synergistic effect of Mn3+ migration and oxygen loss.

Controlled Synthesis of Coral-Like CuO Dendrites with Enhanced Photocatalytic Performance.

In this work, coral-like CuO dendrites were successfully synthesized by a solvothermal method in the mixed solvent of distilled water and ethanol with assistance of dodecyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (DTAB). The products were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) analysis techniques, to investigate their structure and morphology. The coral-like CuO dendrites were about 1 µm in length, with many dendrites pointing to a common center. The influence of experimental conditions on morphology, such as volume ratio of water to ethanol, surfactant DTAB and molar ratio of Na2CO3 and Cu(CH3COO)2, was also discussed. Time-dependent experiment was carried out to explore the formation mechanism while a "particle-sheet-dendrite (PSD)" mechanism was proposed to explain the growth process. The as-prepared CuO dendrites were used to degrade methylene blue (MB) under visible light irradiation in the presence of H2O2, where over 98% of methylene blue (MB) was degraded in 1 h. Results from the study demonstrated that the as-prepared coral-like CuO dendrites exhibited enhanced photocatalytic performance and excellent stability and reusability.