Inherent Function Research Articles

Understanding extracellular vesicle and nanoparticle heterogeneity: Novel methods and considerations

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are a heterogeneous population of membrane‐enclosed nanoparticles released by cells. They play a role in intercellular communication and are involved in numerous physiological and pathological processes. Cells release subpopulations of EVs with distinct composition and inherent biological function which overlap in size. Current size‐based isolation methods are, therefore, not optimal to discriminate between functional EV subpopulations. In addition, EVs overlap in size with several other biological nanoparticles, such as lipoproteins and viruses. Proteomic analysis has allowed for more detailed study of EV composition, and EV isolation approaches based on this could provide a promising alternative for purification based on size. Elucidating EV heterogeneity and the characteristics and role of EV subpopulations will advance our understanding of EV biology and the role of EVs in health and disease. Here, we discuss current knowledge of EV composition, EV heterogeneity and advances in affinity based EV isolation tools.

The Legal Regulation of the Use of Natural Healing Resources: The Theory and Practice of Disputes Resolution

The article is devoted to the issue of regulating the use of natural healing resources in Ukraine, the European Union, and other countries. Natural resources have been found to have many functions, but one of the most important is the ability to use them as a means of preserving or maintaining human health. For this reason, natural healing resources are subject to a special legal regime. Public relations arising from the use and protection of natural healing resources are subjected to legal regulation and devoted to the identification and accounting of natural healing resources, ensuring their rational extraction, use, and protection in order to create favourable conditions for treatment, disease prevention, and recreation. Despite the wide range of healing properties in various natural objects, the environmental legislation of Ukraine contains only a small number of rules on their use. This problem is most fully disclosed in the Water Code of Ukraine, which not only enshrines the procedure for assigning certain water resources to the category of healing but also provides for the adoption of special law statutes and regulations regarding the list of existing water bodies in Ukraine and their inherent healing functions. These regulations highlight the fact that most of the natural healing resources specified in the list belong to the sphere of subsoil use. However, there are no norms in the Subsoil Code of Ukraine that would regulate the use and protection of such objects. Instead, the Subsoil Code of Ukraine contains general rules on basic requirements in the field of subsoil protection, as well as a special article on the protection of subsoil areas of special scientific or cultural value. Healing resources are not mentioned, which is a glaring omission. Situation analysis of the national legal system regarding the use of natural healing resources has shown the need to restructure the legislation, with the primary task of protecting and preserving the healing properties of such sources. For this purpose, the existing practice of public relations among developed European countries, as well as the positive experience in this area, should be taken into account to achieve effective improvement of the legislation system of Ukraine. Studying the issue of prosecution for violation of the rules on the use of natural healing resources or causing damage to them suggests that the national legal system is based on economic interests, without prioritising the preservation of the healing value of such sources. As a result, Ukraine’s policy to preserve the healing properties of natural objects is not characterised by effective methods, significantly reducing the number of such unique and useful resources. The analysis of court cases is evidence that the practice of effective protection and restoration of healing resources is not common. The number of such cases is currently too small when compared with those regarding damages to such natural resources caused by legal entities and individuals.

Assembly of Natively Synthesized Dual Chromophores Into Functional Actinorhodopsin.

Microbial rhodopsin is a simple solar energy-capturing molecule compared to the complex photosynthesis apparatus. Light-driven proton pumping across the cell membrane is a crucial mechanism underlying microbial energy production. Actinobacteria is one of the highly abundant bacterial phyla in freshwater habitats, and members of this lineage are considered to boost heterotrophic growth via phototrophy, as indicated by the presence of actino-opsin (ActR) genes in their genome. However, it is difficult to validate their function under laboratory settings because Actinobacteria are not consistently cultivable. Based on the published genome sequence of Candidatus aquiluna sp. strain IMCC13023, actinorhodopsin from the strain (ActR-13023) was isolated and characterized in this study. Notably, ActR-13023 assembled with natively synthesized carotenoid/retinal (used as a dual chromophore) and functioned as a light-driven outward proton pump. The ActR-13023 gene and putative genes involved in the chromophore (retinal/carotenoid) biosynthetic pathway were detected in the genome, indicating the functional expression ActR-13023 under natural conditions for the utilization of solar energy for proton translocation. Heterologous expressed ActR-13023 exhibited maximum absorption at 565 nm with practical proton pumping ability. Purified ActR-13023 could be reconstituted with actinobacterial carotenoids for additional light-harvesting. The existence of actinorhodopsin and its chromophore synthesis machinery in Actinobacteria indicates the inherent photo-energy conversion function of this microorganism. The assembly of ActR-13023 to its synthesized chromophores validated the microbial community’s importance in the energy cycle.

Organizational and economic mechanism for managing the innovative potential of integrated agroindustrial formations

The working hypothesis of the research is based on the assumption that the modernization of the organizational and economic mechanism for managing the innovative potential of an integrated agro-industrial formation allows the agroecosystem to adapt to the conditions of a competitive market environment as much as possible; modify applied technologies and develop new ones; build up innovative potential, which leads to an increase in the competitiveness of economic entities in the agro-industrial complex. On the basis of a systematic approach, the paper substantiates theoretical provisions and a set of recommendations for the formation of an organizational and economic mechanism for managing the innovative potential of integrated agro-industrial formations, in the development of which general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis were applied, as well as methods of scientific abstraction, functional and structural analysis, modeling method, theory and methodology of the systems approach and other methods of scientific knowledge. The paper substantiates the need for the formation of mechanisms tuned to maximize the implementation of the innovative potential of integrated agro-industrial formations, characterized by the predominance of the scientific and technological component with the inherent function of self-development and the ability to accelerate the development of the agro-industrial complex of meso-level economic systems. The organizational and economic mechanism for managing the innovative potential of integrated agro-industrial formations, presented as a system of tools and impact processes, can be applied in practice to obtain innovative results. The use of the proposed management tools will allow influencing innovative processes and ensuring the effectiveness of activities based on a synergistic effect. The scientific significance of the study lies in the development of theoretical and methodological provisions and scientific and practical recommendations aimed at forming an organizational and economic mechanism for managing the innovative potential of integrated agro-industrial formations.

Dichos & Diabetes: Literary Devices Used by Mexican-Origin Males to Share Their Perspectives on Type 2 Diabetes and Health

ABSTRACT The medical literature emphasizes the increasing role of cultural c onsiderations for improved health education among Latinos. Research in Latino culture reveals the inherent function of figurative language devices, such as dichos, in individual expression and cultural norm transmission. Increased understanding of dichos may provide unique insight into the dynamic relationship between collective cultural knowledge and individual health perceptions. Dichos related to health and diabetes among Latinos, however, remain entirely unexplored. The present study represents a secondary qualitative analysis of the perspectives on diabetes and health of Mexican-origin males that identified inadequate understanding of disease processes and cultural customs as barriers to health. Spanish language transcriptions from the original study were content analyzed by two Latino researchers fluent in English and Spanish to identify the use of dichos by the participants to convey their perspectives on health and diabetes. The results reveal four major categorizations of dichos: religiosity, familism, formation, and individuality. Findings from this study provide insight on the utility of dichos for the identification of health-related perspectives. Dichos may also serve clinicians and health educators as culturally relevant vehicles of communication for encouraging and transformative health discussions. Future diabetes interventions should incorporate dichos to explore quantifiable outcomes of culturally tailored programs.

Digital Transformation of Business Analytical Processes

Current development and management of economic activity is largely associated with the implementation of the concept of the digital economy, which poses new challenges for business intelligence. The set of tasks is formed in order to develop business intelligence so that it matches the improved management of economic subjects, and to ensure the quality of business processes when digital technologies are introduced. Improved management based on the concept of the business environment implies that monitoring principles are used to analyze the behavior of external business environment participants with the purpose to build a rational partnership relationship. The digital economy creates information opportunities in this area, as it provides the access to Big Data and their processing using Big data analytics technologies. With regard to the requirements of management, the article analyzes the behavior of elements of the internal business environment to develop a management solution to improve the effectiveness of their behavior. The high quality of the solution is provided by the information model being a highly adequate image of a particular object under control and the ability of the control apparatus to fully realize the volume of its inherent functions. Under these conditions, the digital transformation of analytical processes is based on its own information platform, which should use breakthrough digital technologies. The research uses such methods as systemic analysis to generalize the modern concepts of economic system management, development of digital technologies and their introduction into management decision-making processes.

Research on Ethnic Original Ecological Music Clustering of MFCC Based on HHT

In view of the characteristics of ethnic original ecological music and the limitation of human ear’s understanding of hearing. This paper presents a MFCC feature extraction method based on HHT transformation. In this method, the ethnic original ecological music signals were decomposed into several inherent mode functions (IMFs) by EEMD and Hilbert transform, in which the Hilbert marginal spectrum of each IMF was used to complete the feature extraction of HHTMFCC through the MEL scale filter. The experiment collected 13 kinds of original ecological music of ethnic minorities in Yunnan. Based on the feature extraction results of HHTMFCC, Kmeans clustering analysis method was adopted to compare and analyze the clustering effect of HHTMFCC. The experimental results showed that the HHTMFCC feature was 0.49 higher than that of MFCC in the Purity index, 1.2 lower than that of Entropy index, and 3% higher than that of F index. The experimental results show that the HHTMFCC features extracted from ethnic original music are better than the traditional MFCC features.

Six Levels of Contract Automation: The Evolution to Smart Legal Contracts - Further Analysis

The legal industry is undergoing digital transformation both in relation to legal processes and the form and functionality of legal instruments. Smart contracts or smart (& legal contracts), are an inevitable outcome. The purpose of this paper is to explore and clarify what is meant by ‘smart legal contracts’ (SLCs) and to orient them within the broader paradigm of digital transformation and automation of contracts, as the form and function of contracts become increasingly digitalised. In order to understand the implications of the various trends involved in digitalisation of contracts, it is important to distinguish between technology applied to different stages of the contract lifecycle. In particular, to identify at what point digitalisation of contracts begins to affect not only the form of the evidence of the contract, but also the contract’s inherent functionality. As contracts progress towards smart legal contracts, the form and functionality of a digital contract starts to depend on, and function with, the digital domain in which the contract operates, raising new legal and practical issues. Automation of contract performance is a field that is lacking in standard definitions and understanding of the incremental steps to contract digitalisation. This paper aims to provide a starting point from which to develop a framework and a taxonomy to assist discussion and development of legally enforceable automation of contract performance. This paper explores the different characteristics of contracts along a proposed spectrum of contract digitalisation by describing a conceptual model of levels of digitalisation and resulting automation of contracts. This model draws analogies with the SAE International J3016 “Levels of Automation” widely adopted for autonomous vehicles. SLCs as presented in this paper, allow parties to obtain legal certainty in the automation of contractual performance by bringing the agreed performance of formally coded contractual terms into the domain of the legally enforceable elements of the contract.

Enhanced antibacterial activity of a novel biocompatible triarylmethane based ionic liquid-graphene oxide nanocomposite

Biofilm formation on medical implants and devices has been a severe concern that results in their impaired performance and life-threatening complications. Thus, development of novel functional coatings for infection prone surfaces with biofilm inhibiting characteristics is of prime significance considering the rapid emergence of multidrug resistant bacteria. Herein we present a novel nanocomposite derived from Graphene Oxide (GO) and a newly developed functional Ionic liquid (IL) obtained through a metathesis reaction between a triarylmethane dye hexamethyl pararosaniline chloride or crystal violet (CV) and sodium dodeceyl sulfate (SDS) to yield [CV][DS] (hexamethyl pararosaniline dodecyl sulfate). This highly biocompatible [CV][DS]-GO nanocomposite exhibit more than four times improved antibacterial activity in comparison to bare GO against both gram negative Escherichia coli (E. coli) and gram positive Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus). As suggested by XRD, FTIR and UV absorption and SEM results improved activity of [CV][DS]-GO nanocomposite is ascribed to the synergistic effect of reduced nanocomposite sheet thickness, enhanced amphiphilicity imparted by dodecylsulfate (DS), exposed active ArN+ groups of CV and some inherent functionalities of GO. This is also complemented by the ruptured and diffused S. aureus cell walls as observed in bacterial SEM result. In contrast, the nanocomposites of the precursors with GO do not demonstrate any significant antibacterial effect. Coatings developed using GO upon infestation with E. coli revealed significant biofilm formation after 48 and 72 h of incubation while [CV][DS]-GO coated surface demonstrated no colony growth under similar circumstances. Thus, [CV][DS]-GO nanocomposite coatings exhibit excellent resistance to bacterial growth even up to 72 h incubation signifying its bactericidal effect. Therefore, the developed nanocomposite may be considered as one of the improved antibacterial wash resistant coating material for biomedical devices and surfaces susceptible to to biofilm formation.

Damage-free light-induced assembly of intestinal bacteria with a bubble-mimetic substrate

Rapid evaluation of functions in densely assembled bacteria is a crucial issue in the efficient study of symbiotic mechanisms. If the interaction between many living microbes can be controlled and accelerated via remote assembly, a cultivation process requiring a few days can be ommitted, thus leading to a reduction in the time needed to analyze the bacterial functions. Here, we show the rapid, damage-free, and extremely dense light-induced assembly of microbes over a submillimeter area with the “bubble-mimetic substrate (BMS)”. In particular, we successfully assembled 104–105 cells of lactic acid bacteria (Lactobacillus casei), achieving a survival rate higher than 95% within a few minutes without cultivation process. This type of light-induced assembly on substrates like BMS, with the maintenance of the inherent functions of various biological samples, can pave the way for the development of innovative methods for rapid and highly efficient analysis of functions in a variety of microbes.

Development of Inherently Antibacterial, Biodegradable, and Biologically Active Chitosan/Pseudo-Protein Hybrid Hydrogels as Biofunctional Wound Dressings.

Developing a new family of hydrogel-based wound dressings that could have a dual biofunctionality of antibacterial and biological responses is highly desirable. In this study, an inherently effective antibacterial and biodegradable hydrogel dressing without the need for impregnated antibiotics was designed, synthesized, characterized, and examined for its effect on macrophages, which initiated inflammatory activity and activated both NO and TNF-α production for the purpose of achieving a better and faster wound healing. The purposes of this research was to develop a novel family of cationic biodegradable hydrogels based on arginine-based poly(ester urea urethane) (Arg-PEUU) and glycidyl methacrylate-modified chitosan (CS-GMA) that has both inherent antibacterial and bioactive functionality as a wound healing dressing for accelerated healing of contaminated or infected wounds. These hybrid hydrogels present a well-defined three-dimensional microporous network structure and have a high water absorption ability, and their biodegradation is effectively accelerated in the presence of lysozymes. The hemolytic activity test, MTT assay, and live/dead assay of these hybrid hydrogels indicated that they had no cytotoxicity toward red blood cells, NIH-3T3 fibroblast cells, and human vascular endothelial cells, thus corroborating their cytocompatibility. Furthermore, these hybrid hydrogels could elevate the release of both produced NO and TNF-α by stimulating and activating RAW 264.7 macrophages, augmenting their antibacterial biological response. The antibacterial assay of these hybrid hydrogels demonstrated their excellent antibacterial activity without the need for impregnated antibacterial agents. Taken together, this new family of biodegradable, antibacterial, and biologically responsive hybrid hydrogels exhibits great potential as biofunctional antibacterial wound dressing candidates for wound healing.

Metallic oxide nanomaterials act as antioxidant nanozymes in higher plants: Trends, meta-analysis, and prospect.

Improving plant resistance against various environmental stresses is crucial to gain higher agricultural productivity for meeting future food demands of the fast-growing global population. Nanozymes, nanomaterials (NMs) with enzyme-like activity, have shown the potential to defend environmental stresses via scavenging reactive oxygen species (ROS) and augmenting the inherent antioxidant functions of plants. However, several studies confirmed that NMs could cause oxidative damage triggered by excessive ROS. In this study, the conversion mechanism between antioxidant and oxidant activities of metallic oxidative nanozymes was systematically reviewed and evaluated using meta-analysis approach. Moreover, our work attempts to seek the optimal dose and physicochemical property of antioxidant-functionalized NMs and put forward future research directions. The meta-analysis results indicated that NMs at a low dose (below 20ppm) exhibited antioxidant activity which could scavenge ROS and alleviate their deleterious impacts. Conversely, their oxidant activity was activated at the exposure dose above 200ppm which might induce ROS overproduction and lead to oxidative stress. Further, root exposure tends to stimulate the oxidant activity of NMs, and the NMs modification is highly promising for improving their bioavailability. A SWOT analysis was conducted to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of agro-applied nanozymes. Therefore, the rational design and development of nanozymes for better antioxidant potential will be beneficial to their applications in agriculture.

Multi-Level Switching of Al-Doped HfO2 RRAM with a Single Voltage Amplitude Set Pulse

In this paper, the resistive switching characteristics in a Ti/HfO2: Al/Pt sandwiched structure are investigated for gradual conductance tuning inherent functions. The variation in conductance of the device under different amplitudes and voltage pulse widths is studied. At the same time, it was found that the variation in switching parameters in resistive random-access memory (RRAM) under impulse response is impacted by the initial conductance states. The device was brought to a preset resistance value range by energizing a single voltage amplitude pulse with a different number of periodicities. This is an efficient and simple programming algorithm to simulate the strength change observed in biological synapses. It exhibited an on/off of about 100, an endurance of over 500 cycles, and a lifetime (at 85 °C) of around 105 s. This multi-level switching two-terminal device can be used for neuromorphic applications to simulate the gradual potentiation (increasing conductance) and inhibition (decreasing conductance) in an artificial synapse.

Zeolite‐Based Memristive Synapse with Ultralow Sub‐10‐fJ Energy Consumption for Neuromorphic Computation

The development of neuromorphic computation faces the appreciable challenge of implementing hardware with energy consumption on the level of a femtojoule per synaptic event to be comparable with the energy consumption of human brain. Controllable ultrathin conductive filaments are needed to achieve such extremely low energy consumption in memristive synapses but their formation is difficult to control owing to their stochastic morphology and unexpected overgrowth. Herein, a zeolite-based memristive synapse is demonstrated for the first time, in which Ag exchange in the sub-nanometer pore closely resembles synaptic Ca2+ dynamics across biomembrane channel. Particularly, the confined ultrasmall pore and low Ag ion migration barrier give the zeolite-based memristive synapse ultralow energy consumption below 10 fJ per synaptic spike, on par with the biological counterpart. Experimental results reveal that the gradual memristive effect is attributed to the dimension modulation of Ag clusters. In addition to emulating inherent cognitive functions through electrical stimulations, the experience-dependent transition of short-term plasticity to long-term plasticity using a chemical modulation method is achieved by treating the initial Ag quantity as a learning experience. The proposed memristors can be used to develop highly efficient memristive neural networks and are considered as a candidate for application in neuromorphic computation.

Global network analysis in Schizosaccharomyces pombe reveals three distinct consequences of the common 1-kb deletion causing juvenile CLN3 disease

Juvenile CLN3 disease is a recessively inherited paediatric neurodegenerative disorder, with most patients homozygous for a 1-kb intragenic deletion in CLN3. The btn1 gene is the Schizosaccharomyces pombe orthologue of CLN3. Here, we have extended the use of synthetic genetic array (SGA) analyses to delineate functional signatures for two different disease-causing mutations in addition to complete deletion of btn1. We show that genetic-interaction signatures can differ for mutations in the same gene, which helps to dissect their distinct functional effects. The mutation equivalent to the minor transcript arising from the 1-kb deletion (btn1102–208del) shows a distinct interaction pattern. Taken together, our results imply that the minor 1-kb deletion transcript has three consequences for CLN3: to both lose and retain some inherent functions and to acquire abnormal characteristics. This has particular implications for the therapeutic development of juvenile CLN3 disease. In addition, this proof of concept could be applied to conserved genes for other mendelian disorders or any gene of interest, aiding in the dissection of their functional domains, unpacking the global consequences of disease pathogenesis, and clarifying genotype–phenotype correlations. In doing so, this detail will enhance the goals of personalised medicine to improve treatment outcomes and reduce adverse events.

Accounting for preference dependency in target costing \u2013 a note

Target costing is a well-established strategic cost management tool in theory and practice. The original target costing model implies independence of customer preferences resulting in additive utility functions for the customer-oriented optimization of cost structures. We argue that this independence of preferences is not given until a minimum variant of a product is reached that provides its inherent functionality. This is reasonable since one cannot assign customer utility to a product that does not function in its most basic way. Our modified model accounts for the dependency of customer preferences and differentiates between the costs necessary to produce a minimum variant and those related to product features beyond this minimum variant. The customer-oriented optimization of the cost structure is then conducted only for those costs that exceed the costs of the minimum variant. This modification justifies the preference independence assumption in target costing and allows for a more reasonable assignment of required adjustments in costs per product component.

Substrate-dependent control of the chiral orientation of mesenchymal stem cells: image-based quantitative profiling

Stem-cell (SC) chirality or left-right (LR) asymmetry is an essential attribute, observed during tissue regeneration. The ability to control the LR orientation of cells by biophysical manipulation is a promising approach for recapitulating their inherent function. Despite remarkable progress in tissue engineering, the development of LR chirality in SCs has been largely unexplored. Here, we demonstrate the role of substrate stiffness on the LR asymmetry of cultured mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). We found that MSCs acquired higher asymmetricity when cultured on stiffer PCL/collagen matrices. To confirm cellular asymmetry, different parameters such as the aspect ratio, orientation angle and intensity of polarized proteins (Par) were investigated. The results showed a significant (p < 0.01) difference in the average orientation angle, the cellular aspect ratio, and the expression of actin and Par proteins in MSCs cultured on matrices with different stiffnesses. Furthermore, a Gaussian support-vector machine was applied to classify cells cultured on both (2% and 10% PCL/Collagen) matrices, with a resulting accuracy of 96.2%. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first that interrelates and quantifies MSC asymmetricity with matrix properties using a simple 2D model.

Expanding the Boundary of Biorefinery: Organonitrogen Chemicals from Biomass.

Organonitrogen chemicals are essential in many aspects of modern life. Over 80% of the top 200 prescribed pharmaceutical products contain at least one nitrogen atom in the molecule, while all top 10 agrochemicals contain nitrogen, just to name a few. At present, the prevailing industrial processes for manufacturing organonitrogen chemicals start from nonrenewable fossil resources, but eventually we have to make these chemicals in a more sustainable manner. Biomass represents the largest renewable carbon resource on earth, which is inexpensive and widely available. Integrating biomass into the organonitrogen chemical supply chain will mitigate the carbon footprint, diversify the product stream, and enhance the economic competitiveness of biorefinery. Short-cut synthesis routes can be created for oxygen-containing organonitrogen compounds by exploiting the inherent oxygen functionalities in the biomass resources. Moreover, for nitrogen-containing biomass components such as chitin, a unique opportunity to make organonitrogen chemicals bypassing the energy-intensive Haber-Bosch ammonia synthesis process arises. Estimated at 100 billion tons of annual production in the world, chitin captures more nitrogen than the Haber-Bosch process in the form of amide functional groups in its polymer side chain.In this Account, we intend to summarize our efforts to establish new reaction routes to synthesize valuable organonitrogen chemicals from renewable resources. Enabled by tailor-designed catalytic systems, diverse nitrogen-containing products including amines, amino acids, nitriles, and N-heterocycles have been obtained from a range of biomass feedstock either directly or via intermediate platform compounds. Two strategies to produce organonitrogen chemicals are presented. For platform chemicals derived from cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin, and lipids, which are enriched with oxygen functionalities, in particular, hydroxyl groups, the key chemistry to be developed is the catalytic transformation of hydroxyl groups into nitrogen-containing groups using NH3 as the nitrogen source. Along this line, Ru- and Ni-based heterogeneous catalysts are developed to convert alcohols to amines and/or nitriles via a thermal catalytic pathway, while CdS nanomaterials are explored to promote -OH to -NH2 conversion under visible-light irradiation. Metal-zeolite multifunctional systems are further established to enable the synthesis of N-heterocycles from O-heterocycles. The second strategy involves the use of chitin and chitin derivatives as the starting materials. Under the concept of shell biorefinery, distinctive protocols have been established to chemically transform chitin as the sole feedstock to amino sugars, amino alcohols, furanic amides, and N-heterocycles. By combining mechanochemistry with biotransformation, an integrated process to convert shrimp shell waste to complex, high-value, chiral compounds including tyrosine and l-DOPA is also demonstrated.

Functional Nucleic‐Acid‐Decorated Spherical Nanoparticles: Preparation Strategies and Current Applications in Cancer Therapy

Functional nucleic acids (FNAs) have drawn widespread attention in the construction of functional nanomaterials for biomedical applications due to their inherent biological functions and sequence programmability, as well as high thermal stability and easy chemical modification. FNA‐decorated spherical nanoparticles (FSNPs) are composed of a metal/metal‐free spherical core and a radially oriented FNA shell. Attracted by their unique capabilities, such as resistance to nuclease degradation and capability of crossing the blood–brain barrier, FSNPs as smart nanomaterials for cancer therapy are reviewed. The preparation strategies of FSNPs are first summarized, and the applications of responsive linkers in stimuli‐responsive drug release are introduced. The FSNPs are categorized into aptamer‐, i‐motif‐, DNAzyme‐, antisense oligonucleotide‐, and CpG oligodeoxynucleotide‐decorated SNPs. Their applications in cancer therapy include tumor‐targeting drug delivery and controllable releasing of drugs, overcoming physiological or pathological obstacles such as blood–brain barrier and interstitial transport barriers, as well as a reversal of resistance to chemotherapy and antitumor immune response activation. The remaining challenges and future directions of FSNPs are also discussed and proposed.

Spilling Ink and Cleaning Oil

Spilling Ink and Cleaning Oil