RSC Advances Blog

We are very pleased to introduce Irene Maier, the corresponding author of the paper ‘Mannosylated hemagglutinin peptides bind cyanovirin-N independent of disulfide-bonds in complementary binding sites‘. Her article has been very well received and handpicked by our reviewers and handling editors as one of our May HOT articles. Irene was kind enough to tell us more about the work that went into this article and what she hopes to achieve in the future. You can find out more about the author and their article below and find more HOT articles in our online collection.

Meet the Author

Irene is working as a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She graduated from the University of Vienna and was awarded an international L’Oréal-UNESCO fellowship for her work on the development of an optical immunochip biosensor for rapid allergen detection in complex food matrices and allergy diagnosis. She is interested in the molecular understanding of immune diseases and emphasizes studies on the interactions between immunoglobulin-like protein structures and antigens.

Irene did a postdoc at Caltech before she changed to UCLA. In her postdoctoral work with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Agency, she started broad cancer research projects with a team of collaborators committed to high-level space biology. As a biochemist by training, Irene designed and organized radiation experiments in preclinical studies to be performed at the NASA Space Research Laboratory, a high-tech synchrotron service institution for basic and applied science in Upton, NY.  Her science has been aiming at establishing networks to implement new microbiota-related biomarkers for the assessment of side-effects and adverse events in radiation therapy. She recently returned to the Medical University of Vienna, where she is continuing research on radiation-induced intestinal microbiota-compositions that alter bone loss.

Could you briefly explain the focus of your article to the non-specialist (in one or two sentences only) and why it is of current interest?
We chemically synthesized mono- and di-mannosylated influenza glycoprotein peptides, mimicking naturally found N (asparagine)-linked N-acetyl glucosamine and high-mannose oligosaccharides on the surface of viruses that cause life-threatening viral infections. A comparison of predicted N-glycosylation sites on spike glycoproteins of Wuhan-Hu-1–2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2003 (SARS-CoV) strains has been reported these days.

How big an impact could your results potentially have?
Binding studies of cyanobacterial Cyanovirin-N to mannose-containing moieties are designed.
Broadly neutralizing antiviral agents can be tested for tight binding to viruses based on computational protein design and the number of glycosylation sites involved.

Could you explain the motivation behind this study?
Cyanovirin has been shown to reveal broad neutralizing activity against human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and to specifically bind Manα(1→2)Manα units exposed on various glycoproteins of enveloped viruses, such as influenza hemagglutinin and Ebola glycoprotein.

In your opinion, what are the key design considerations for your study?
Binding studies of computationally designed binding-site variants of pseudo-antibody Cyanovirin were performed. We show that this protein dimer is cross-linking two carbohydrate binding sites to achieve neutralization ability. It constitutes a domain-swapped naturally stabilized molecule with a single disulfide-bridge linker.

Which part of the work towards this paper proved to be most challenging?
Bound peptides were used as mimicry to a direct complementary binding site of Cyanovirin-N for binding studies. Variants of Cyanovirin-N were mutated to replace native cysteine residues by either charged or nonpolar amino-acids and tested for high-affinity and low-affinity binding to hemagglutinin and mannosylated peptides.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment?
Finding lectin molecules that allow for the measurement of binding constants to glycoproteins exposed at the surface of immune-stimulating cells.

What is the next step? What work is planned?
The study was pursued by Irene Maier in collaboration with scientists from the University of California, Los Angeles, the Max Perutz Labs, and the University of Vienna, Christian Becker and Philipp Schilling. We aim to investigate the stability of antiviral agents and molecules upon exposure to high-energy and cosmic radiation on Earth and in Space.

We acknowledge the support given by the City of Vienna and the Fulbright U.S. Scholarship Program to I.M.

Mannosylated hemagglutinin peptides bind cyanovirin-N independent of disulfide-bonds in complementary binding sites
Philipp E. Schilling, Georg Kontaxis, Martin Dragosits, Robert H. Schiestl, Christian F. W. Becker and Irene Maier
RSC Adv., 2020,10, 11079-11087
DOI: 10.1039/D0RA01128B, Paper

Submit to RSC Advances today! Check out our author guidelines for information on our article types or find out more about the advantages of publishing in a Royal Society of Chemistry journal.

Keep up to date with our latest HOT articles, Reviews, Collections & more by following us on Twitter. You can also keep informed by signing up to our E-Alerts.

We are very pleased to introduce Dr Ezequiel Vidal, one of the corresponding authors of the paper ‘New, inexpensive and simple 3D printable device for nephelometric and fluorimetric determination based on smartphone sensing‘. The article was published as a part of his PhD thesis, directed by Dr Claudia Domini, Universidad Nacional del Sur in Bahía Blanca, Argentina. Their article has been very well received and handpicked by our reviewers and handling editors as one of our May HOT articles. Ezequiel was kind enough to tell us more about the work that went into this article and what he hopes to achieve in the future. You can find out more about the author and their article below and find more HOT articles in our online collection.

Meet the Author

Ezequiel Vidal studied biochemistry in Universidad Nacional del Sur, Bahia Blanca, Argentina. In 2002, he received his degree and from 2003 his work was far from research laboratories. In 2017, he started working towards his doctoral thesis in analytical chemistry. Since 2015 his principal work is as a biochemist in the municipal bromatology laboratory of Bahia Blanca, Buenos Aires Argentina.

The reasearch group: Back row (from left to right) – Damián Uriarte, Maite Aguinaga, Sofia Rivero, Dr. Anabela Lorenzetti and Ezequiel Vidal. Front row – Natalis Gomez, Dr. Claudia Elizabeth Domini and Dr. Mariano Garrido.

Could you briefly explain the focus of your article to the non-specialist (in one or two sentences only) and why it is of current interest?
The article describes the creation and validation of a cheap 3D printed device that can be attached to a smartphone for making chemical determinations. This gadget represents an ideal solution for developing countries, remote places and on site determinations.

How big an impact could your results potentially have?
The use of this device helps to reduce costs and simplify technology. Its impact could be big in places where there are no conventional laboratories. What is more, the development of this kind of device can simplify and generalize the use of inexpensive and portable sensing instruments.

Could you explain the motivation behind this study?
The motivation for this study was to prove that smartphones can be used far beyond simple applications.

In your opinion, what are the key design considerations for your study?
The key consideration in this study is to use general principles of analytical instrumentation to create a new and simplified device for specific uses.

Which part of the work towards this paper proved to be most challenging?
Optimizing the device dimensions for an optimal working condition was the most challenging part of the work.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment?
3D printed devices are every day more accessible, creating not just simple pieces but complete determination systems.

What is the next step? What work is planned?
We are working on different kinds of optical devices related with smartphones and 3D printers. There is a lot of work to do until this technology reaches its maximum level.

New, inexpensive and simple 3D printable device for nephelometric and fluorimetric determination based on smartphone sensing
Ezequiel Vidal, Anabela S. Lorenzetti, Miguel Ángel Aguirre, Antonio Canals and Claudia E. Domini
RSC Adv., 2020,10, 19713-19719
DOI: 10.1039/D0RA02975K

Submit to RSC Advances today! Check out our author guidelines for information on our article types or find out more about the advantages of publishing in a Royal Society of Chemistry journal.

Keep up to date with our latest HOT articles, Reviews, Collections & more by following us on Twitter. You can also keep informed by signing up to our E-Alerts.

We are very pleased to introduce Professor Jian-Ping Lang, the corresponding author of the paper ‘Ultrathin sulfate-intercalated NiFe-layered double hydroxide nanosheets for efficient electrocatalytic oxygen evolution‘. His article has been very well received and handpicked by our reviewers and handling editors as one of our May HOT articles. Jian-Ping was kind enough to tell us more about the work that went into this article and what he hopes to achieve in the future. You can find out more about the author and their article below and find more HOT articles in our online collection.

Meet the Author

Jian-Ping Lang received his Ph.D. degree in 1993 from Nanjing University. During 1995-2001, he was a postdoc at Nagoya University and at Harvard University working on Mo/Fe/S chemistry related to the FeMoco structure in nitrogenases. In 2001, he returned to Soochow University and was promoted to a full Professor of the College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science. He was promoted as a Chung Kong Scholar Professor by the Ministry of Education of China (2012), a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) of UK (2014), a Foreign Fellow of European Academy of Sciences (2018) and a Chair Professor of Chemistry at Soochow University (2018). His research interests cover the synthesis, structural chemistry and third-order nonlinear optical (NLO) properties of metal sulfide clusters, photochemical cycloaddition of olefinic ligands within crystalline preformed MOFs, nano-scaled MOFs and other nanomaterials for the transformation of small molecules, and so on. He has published more than 440 research papers in the journals such as Chem. Soc. Rev., JACS, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. and applied 25 Chinese patents. Currently he is working as the vice-chairman of Academic Degree Evaluation Committee and vice-director of Academic board of Soochow University. He is also serving as the vice-chairman of Crystal Chemistry Specialized Committee of Chinese Chemical Society, a member of Inorganic Chemistry Disciplinary Committee of Chinese Chemical Society and a member of Molecular Sieve Specialized Committee of Chinese Chemical Society. He was awarded the Distinguished Young Scholar Fund by the National Natural Science Foundation, the second prizes of the Science and Technology Advancement of Jiangsu Province (2010), and Natural Science by Ministry of Education of China (2011). He is a member of International Advisory Board of Dalton Transactions (2010-date) and an Editorial Board Member of Scientific Reports of Springer Nature Limited (2015-date).

Picture of the research group (group leader: Jian-Ping Lang)

Could you briefly explain the focus of your article to the non-specialist (in one or two sentences only) and why it is of current interest?
Our article introduced a facile and promising method for the synthesis and modification of ultrathin NiFe-layered double hydroxides (LDHs) as the highly efficient oxygen evolution reaction (OER) electrocatalysts.

How big an impact could your results potentially have?
Compared with traditional synthetic methods, our results demonstrated that ultrathin NiFe-LDHs can be directly prepared without adding additive (alkali, surfactant), and even large-scale synthesis of such LDHs can also be achieved. Moreover, we revealed the influence of solvent water and sulfate ion on the morphology and electrocatalytic performance of our NiFe-LDHs through a series of detailed structural and electrochemical characterization, which provided a new insight into the design and preparation of LDHs and other 2D lamellar materials.

Could you explain the motivation behind this study?
•Current commercial OER electrocatalysts mostly focus on precious metal materials, but the scarcity and high cost greatly hinder their large-scale synthesis and application.
•Although the reported NiFe-LDHs possess good performance for OER, the facile and efficient large-scale synthesis of ultrathin nanosheets with uniform morphology represents a highly challenging job.
•Considering the negative effect of additives (alkali, surfactant) on the active sites of the electrocatalyst, our initial design idea was direct control of the morphology of NiFe-LDHs through solvents (H₂O) or anions (SO₄^2-), thereby ensuring the cleanliness of the as-prepared catalyst surface.

In your opinion, what are the key design considerations for your study?
Well, to conduct such a study, we must precisely regulate the reaction conditions of NiFe-LDHs. This includes the type and ratio of the metal salt selected, the combination of mixed solvents, reaction temperature and time, pH, etc. The whole reaction process involves multiple variables, and thus the key to design considerations is to find the optimal synthesis conditions of ultrathin NiFe-LDHs nanosheets.

Which part of the work towards this paper proved to be most challenging?
Overall, except for the fine characterization of the electrocatalyst, we consider the study of catalytic mechanisms to be the most challenging, especially the in-situ changes in the structure of NiFe-LDHs during the catalytic process and the determination of the active sites.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment?
We have acquired a simple and promising method for synthesizing ultrathin LDHs nanosheets. In particular, we are very excited about the universality of the synthesis of different two-dimensional materials that are widely used in the field of energy storage and conversion.

What is the next step? What work is planned?
Regarding the work related to the present article, the first thing we are going to do is to explore specific reaction process, focusing on the corresponding relationship between structure and performance of the electrocatalysts. Besides, we are currently examining the universality of this synthetic strategy, such as the synthesis of ultrathin MOFs materials.

Ultrathin sulfate-intercalated NiFe-layered double hydroxide nanosheets for efficient electrocatalytic oxygen evolution
Xiao-Xiao Jiang, Jiang-Yan Xue, Zhong-Yin Zhao, Cong Li, Fei-Long Li, Chen Cao, Zheng Niu, Hong-Wei Gu and Jian-Ping Lang
RSC Adv., 2020,10, 12145-12150
DOI: 10.1039/D0RA00845A, Paper

Submit to RSC Advances today! Check out our author guidelines for information on our article types or find out more about the advantages of publishing in a Royal Society of Chemistry journal.

Keep up to date with our latest HOT articles, Reviews, Collections & more by following us on Twitter. You can also keep informed by signing up to our E-Alerts.