RSC Advances Blog

Looking back at 2020, we would like to share with you some of the great research that has been published in RSC Advances over the year. We are proud to present a selection of the most popular 2020 biological chemistry papers, reviews and HOT articles published so far.

We hope you enjoy reading these articles and as always, all our articles are open access – free to read and accessible to everyone.

Smart capsule for non-invasive sampling and studying of the gastrointestinal microbiome
Jose Fernando Waimin, Rahim Rahimi et al. DOI: 10.1039/C9RA10986B

Source: Purdue University photo/Mark Simons

The study by Rahim Rahimi and colleagues was published in April and was covered in several news outlets. Purdue University News describes the invention: Purdue University researchers built a way to swallow a tool that acts like a colonoscopy, except that instead of looking at the colon with a camera, the technology takes samples of bacteria. The technology could also move throughout the whole GI tract, not just the colon. This tract, in addition to the colon, includes the mouth, esophagus, stomach, pancreas, liver, gallbladder, small intestine and rectum. Essentially, this tool would make it possible to conduct a “gut-oscopy”. A video showing how it would work is on YouTube.

‘It’s all about being able to take samples of bacteria anywhere in the gut. That was impossible before,’ said Rahim Rahimi, a Purdue assistant professor of materials engineering.

Over the year, our reviewers and Associate Editors have handpicked articles of particular interest and marked them as HOT. We are very pleased to highlight some outstanding 2020 biological chemistry HOT articles:

Molecular crowding induces primer extension by RNA polymerase through base stacking beyond Watson–Crick rules
Shuntaro Takahashi, Naoki Sugimoto et al., DOI: 10.1039/D0RA06502A

In their article Shuntaro Takahashi, Naoki Sugimoto and colleagues investigated the effect of chemical environments on gene replication of the virus RNA polymerase, providing insight into not only the evolution of life but also the mechanism of mutation of the virus genome including SARS-CoV-2.

“The stability of the Watson-Crick base pair is NOT always the most stable, which can be perturbed by molecular environments. Therefore, we speculated that the replication of nucleic acids in the enzyme could also be affected by molecular environments and cause replication errors”, says Professor Sugimoto. “We were excited to find the replication rules became dependent on the stacking interactions more than Watson-Crick base pairing under molecular crowding conditions. This indicates that the replication error can be simply explained by the changes in dielectric constant.”

Their results suggest that the molecular environment could take part in the evolution of life by enhancing the replication error of genome sequences and highlight the significance of molecular environments of patients’ cells for spreading viruses.

Read the interview with the authors about their article here.

More HOT articles

Aggregation of biologically important peptides and proteins: inhibition or acceleration depending on protein and metal ion concentrations
Benjamin Gabriel Poulson, Mariusz Jaremko et al., DOI: 10.1039/C9RA09350H, Review

Lophiostomin A–D: new 3,4-dihydroisocoumarin derivatives from the endophytic fungus Lophiostoma sp. Sigrf10
Ziling Mao, Ligang Zhou et al., DOI: 10.1039/D0RA00538J

Read the full HOT article collection

Reviews

Nanozyme-based catalytic theranostics
Yanan Zhang, Kelong Fan et al., DOI: 10.1039/C9RA09021E

G-Protein coupled receptors: structure and function in drug discovery
Chiemela S. Odoemelam, Philippe B. Wilson et al., DOI: 10.1039/D0RA08003A

Antimicrobial peptides from Bombyx mori: a splendid immune defense response in silkworms
Jannatun Nesa, Octavio L. Franco et al., DOI: 10.1039/C9RA06864C

Papers

Anti-HIV drug repurposing against SARS-CoV-2
Peng Sang, Li-Quan Yang et al., DOI: 10.1039/D0RA01899F

Merits of photocatalytic and antimicrobial applications of gamma-irradiated Co_xNi_1−xFe₂O₄/SiO₂/TiO₂; x = 0.9 nanocomposite for pyridine removal and pathogenic bacteria/fungi disinfection: implication for wastewater treatment
Gharieb S. El-Sayyad, Mohamed Gobara et al., DOI: 10.1039/C9RA10505K

An atomic resolution description of folic acid using solid state NMR measurements
Manasi Ghosh, Krishna Kishor Dey et al., DOI: 10.1039/D0RA03772A

Characterization of insulin cross-seeding: the underlying mechanism reveals seeding and denaturant-induced insulin fibrillation proceeds through structurally similar intermediates
Mohsen Akbarian, Ali Akbar Moosavi-Movahedi et al., DOI: 10.1039/D0RA05414C

iTRAQ-based proteomic analysis reveals several key metabolic pathways associated with male sterility in Salvia miltiorrhiza
Ruihong Wang, Hongbo Guo et al. DOI: 10.1039/C9RA09240D

Natural deep eutectic solvent supported targeted solid–liquid polymer carrier for breast cancer therapy
Xianfu Sun, Mariappan Rajan et al., DOI: 10.1039/D0RA03790G

Lessons learned in engineering interrupted adenylation domains when attempting to create trifunctional enzymes from three independent monofunctional ones
Taylor A. Lundby, Sylvie Garneau-Tsodikova et al., DOI: 10.1039/D0RA05490A

An intermolecular-split G-quadruplex DNAzyme sensor for dengue virus detection
Jeunice Ida, Theam Soon Lim et al., DOI: 10.1039/D0RA05439A

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