Balancing high energy density and chemical stability in redox flow batteries with symmetric tetrazines

Nonaqueous redox flow batteries are a promising technology for grid-scale energy storage, however, their commercial success relies on identifying redox active materials that exhibit extreme potentials, high solubilities in all states of charge, and long cycling stabilities. Meeting these requirements has been particularly challenging for molecules capable of storing negative charge. Within this context, the symmetric tetrazines remain unexplored despite their unique structural properties that enable them to meet these challenges. Herein, we prepared s-tetrazines substituted with methyl, methoxy, and thiomethyl substituents and evaluated their electrochemical properties, solubility, and cycling stability. These studies revealed that 3,6-dimethoxy-s-tetrazine undergoes a reversible one-electron reduction to generate a soluble (>0.5 M in electrolyte/solvent) and stable (t1/2 > 1240 h) radical anion. When implemented in a lab-scale flow battery, it exhibited a relatively slow capacity fade of 13% over 100 cycles (38 h). Given their uncommonly high solubility and cycling stability, we believe that s-tetrazine derivatives should be further explored for non-aqueous redox flow batteries.

Use of Novel Non-Toxic Bismuth Catalyst for the Preparation of Flexible Polyurethane Foam

Foam products are one of the largest markets for polyurethane (PU) and are heavily used in many sectors. However, current PU formulations use highly toxic and environmentally unfriendly production processes. Meanwhile, the increasing environmental concerns and regulations are intensifying the research into green and non-toxic products. In this study, we synthesized flexible polyurethane foam (PUF) using different weight percentages (0.025%, 0.05% and 0.1%) of a non-toxic bismuth catalyst. The bismuth-catalyzed foams presented a well evolved cellular structure with an open cell morphology. The properties of the bismuth-catalyzed flexible PUF, such as the mechanical, morphological, kinetic and thermal behaviors, were optimized and compared with a conventional tin-catalyzed PUF. The bismuth-catalyst revealed a higher isocyanate conversion efficiency than the stannous octoate catalyst. When comparing samples with similar densities, the bismuth-catalyzed foams present better mechanical behavior than the tin-catalyzed sample with similar thermal stability. The high solubility of bismuth triflate in water, together with its high Lewis acidity, have been shown to benefit the production of PU foams.

Evaluating the Protective Effects of Calcium Carbonate Coating on Sandstone Cultural Heritage

The purpose of this work was to use different surfactants to deposit different crystalline calcium carbonate films on the surface of sandstone through a simple double displacement reaction. This was done to test the protective effects of calcium carbonate coatings based on water absorption, moisture permeability and weather resistance. Experimental results showed that the air permeability of the stone treated with vaterite calcium carbonate was reduced, but that this did not affect water vapor’s access into and out of the stone. Compared with untreated stone, the water absorption rate was reduced 0.5 times, and the weather resistance increased by 4 times due to small crystal grains, high solubility, and deep penetration hindering the erosion of water and soluble salts. These findings are expected to provide useful suggestions for the protection of stone cultural heritage.

Lithium-Cation Conductivity of Solid Solutions in Li6-xZr2-xAxO7 (A = Nb, Ta) Systems

Li6-xZr2-xAxO7 (A = Nb; Ta) system with 0 < x < 0.30 is synthesized by glycine-nitrate method. Boundaries of solid solutions based on monoclinic Li6Zr2O7 are determined; temperature (200–600 °C) and concentration dependences of conductivity are investigated. It is shown that monoclinic Li6Zr2O7 exhibits better transport properties compared to its triclinic modification. Li5.8Zr1.8Nb(Ta)0.2O7 solid solutions have a higher lithium-cation conductivity at 300 °C compared to solid electrolytes based on other lithium zirconates due the “open” structure of monoclinic Li6Zr2O7 and a high solubility of the doping cations.

Water solubility of clary sage essential oil

The article provides data on the degree of solubility of essential oils in water. Essential oils are considered as compounds that are completely insoluble or slightly soluble, or refer to substances with a certain, limited, solubility. The distillation of the essential oil from the raw material is preceded by its dissolution in water and hydrodiffusion in the solution beyond the limits of the essential oil containers. The solubility of essential oils in water, apparently, plays an important role in living plants during their intracellular movement and removal outside the cells. To clarify the concepts, samples of primary and secondary oils obtained in production have been examined. The solubility of clary sage oil at 20○C reaches a significant value (0.094% for primary one, 0.406% for secondary one), but with an increase in temperature up to 40○C it decreases to 17-15%. Further study of the GLC data shows that the change in the percentage is due to an increase in the content of cineole and unidentified components in the oil, which have a relatively high solubility, hardly noticeable in the primary oil and accumulate in the secondary one and in the one isolated from the primary one. In the sample isolated from the water solution of the secondary oil there are 2 unidentified components located between cineole and linalool and apparently having increased solubility. Due to this, the percentage of linalool in the oil isolated from the solution decreases, but the absolute amount of the latter in 100 ml of the solution increases 2,58 times compared to the oil isolated from the primary oil solution.

Barnase-Barstar Pair: Contemporary Application in Cancer Research and Nanotechnology

Barnase is an extracellular ribonuclease secreted by Bacillus amyloliquefaciens that was originally studied as a small stable enzyme with robust folding. The identification of barnase intracellular inhibitor barstar led to the discovery of an incredibly strong protein-protein interaction. Together, barnase and barstar provide a fully genetically encoded toxin-antitoxin pair having an extremely low dissociation constant. Moreover, compared to other dimerization systems, the barnase-barstar module provides the exact one-to-one ratio of the complex components and possesses high stability of each component in a complex and high solubility in aqueous solutions without self-aggregation. The unique properties of barnase and barstar allow the application of this pair for the engineering of different variants of targeted anticancer compounds and cytotoxic supramolecular complexes. Using barnase in suicide gene therapy has also found its niche in anticancer therapy. The application of barnase and barstar in contemporary experimental cancer therapy is reflected in the review.

An open-source automated PEG precipitation assay to measure the relative solubility of proteins with low material requirement

The solubility of proteins correlates with a variety of their properties, including function, production yield, pharmacokinetics, and formulation at high concentrations. High solubility is therefore a key requirement for the development of protein-based reagents for applications in life sciences, biotechnology, diagnostics, and therapeutics. Accurate solubility measurements, however, remain challenging and resource intensive, which limits their throughput and hence their applicability at the early stages of development pipelines, when long-lists of candidates are typically available in minute amounts. Here, we present an automated method based on the titration of a crowding agent (polyethylene glycol, PEG) to quantitatively assess relative solubility of proteins using about 200 µg of purified material. Our results demonstrate that this method is accurate and economical in material requirement and costs of reagents, which makes it suitable for high-throughput screening. This approach is freely-shared and based on a low cost, open-source liquid-handling robot. We anticipate that this method will facilitate the assessment of the developability of proteins and make it substantially more accessible.

Proteome-wide landscape of solubility limits in a bacterial cell

Proteins are prone to aggregate when they are expressed above their solubility limits, a phenomenon termed supersaturation. Aggregation may occur as proteins emerge from the ribosome or after they fold and accumulate in the cell, but the relative importance of these two routes remain poorly known. Here, we systematically probed the solubility limits of each Escherichia coli protein upon overexpression using an image-based screen coupled with machine learning. The analysis suggests that competition between folding and aggregation from the unfolded state governs the two aggregation routes. Remarkably, the majority (70%) of insoluble proteins have low supersaturation risks in their unfolded states and rather aggregate after folding. Furthermore, a substantial fraction (~35%) of the proteome remain soluble at concentrations much higher than those found naturally, indicating a large margin of safety to tolerate gene expression changes. We show that high disorder content and low surface stickiness are major determinants of high solubility and are favored in abundant bacterial proteins. Overall, our proteome-wide study provides empirical insights into the molecular determinants of protein aggregation routes in a bacterial cell.