抗原变异可使得多种致病微生物易于逃避宿主免疫应答。表达在感染红细胞表面的恶性疟原虫红细胞表面蛋白1（PfPMP1）与感染红细胞、内皮细胞、树突状细胞以及胎盘的单个或多个受体作用，在黏附及免疫逃避中起关键的作用。每个单倍体基因组var基因家族编码约60种成员，通过启动转录不同的var基因变异体为抗原变异提供了分子基础。

疟原虫var基因转换速率变化导致抗原变异[英]／Paul H, Robert P, Christodoulou Z, et al//Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

Liming Dai,*,†,‡ Yuhua Xue,†,‡ Liangti Qu,* Hyun-Jung Choi, and Jong-Beom Baek* †Center of Advanced Science and Engineering for Carbon (Case4Carbon), Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, 10900 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio 44106, United States Key Laboratory of Cluster Science, Ministry of Education of China, Beijing Key Laboratory of Photoelectronic/Electrophotonic Conversion Materials, Department of Chemistry, School of Science, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, People’s Republic of China School of Energy and Chemical Engineering/Center for Dimension-Controllable Covalent Organic Frameworks, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), 100 Banyeon, Ulsan, 689-798, South Korea

Metal-free catalysts for oxygen reduction reaction.

Supercapacitors are electrochemical energy storage devices that operate on the simple mechanism of adsorption of ions from an electrolyte on a high-surface-area electrode. Over the past decade, the performance of supercapacitors has greatly improved, as electrode materials have been tuned at the nanoscale and electrolytes have gained an active role, enabling more efficient storage mechanisms. In porous carbon materials with subnanometre pores, the desolvation of the ions leads to surprisingly high capacitances. Oxide materials store charge by surface redox reactions, leading to the pseudocapacitive effect. Understanding the physical mechanisms underlying charge storage in these materials is important for further development of supercapacitors. Here we review recent progress, from both in situ experiments and advanced simulation techniques, in understanding the charge storage mechanism in carbon- and oxide-based supercapacitors. We also discuss the challenges that still need to be addressed for building better supercapacitors.

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Efficient storage mechanisms for building better supercapacitors

It is estimated that the world will need to double its energy supply by 2050. Nanotechnology has opened up new frontiers in materials science and engineering to meet this challenge by creating new materials, particularly carbon nanomaterials, for efficient energy conversion and storage. Comparing to conventional energy materials, carbon nanomaterials possess unique size-/surface-dependent (e.g., morphological, electrical, optical, and mechanical) properties useful for enhancing the energy-conversion and storage performances. During the past 25 years or so, therefore, considerable efforts have been made to utilize the unique properties of carbon nanomaterials, including fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, and graphene, as energy materials, and tremendous progress has been achieved in developing high-performance energy conversion (e.g., solar cells and fuel cells) and storage (e.g., supercapacitors and batteries) devices. This article reviews progress in the research and development of carbon nanomaterials during the past twenty years or so for advanced energy conversion and storage, along with some discussions on challenges and perspectives in this exciting field.

Carbon Nanomaterials for Advanced Energy Conversion and Storage

Since the manufacture and use of nanoparticles are increasing, humans are more likely to be exposed occupationally or via consumer products and the environment. However, so far toxicity data for most manufactured nanoparticles are limited. The aim of this study was to investigate and compare different nanoparticles and nanotubes regarding cytotoxicity and ability to cause DNA damage and oxidative stress. The study was focused on different metal oxide particles (CuO, TiO2, ZnO, CuZnFe2O4, Fe3O4, Fe2O3), and the toxicity was compared to that of carbon nanoparticles and multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT). The human lung epithelial cell line A549 was exposed to the particles, and cytotoxicity was analyzed using trypan blue staining. DNA damage and oxidative lesions were determined using the comet assay, and intracellular production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) was measured using the oxidation-sensitive fluoroprobe 2',7'-dichlorofluorescin diacetate (DCFH-DA). The results showed that there was a high variation among different nanoparticles concerning their ability to cause toxic effects. CuO nanoparticles were most potent regarding cytotoxicity and DNA damage. The toxicity was likely not explained by Cu ions released to the cell medium. These particles also caused oxidative lesions and were the only particles that induced an almost significant increase (p = 0.058) in intracellular ROS. ZnO showed effects on cell viability as well as DNA damage, whereas the TiO2 particles (a mix of rutile and anatase) only caused DNA damage. For iron oxide particles (Fe3O4, Fe2O3), no or low toxicity was observed, but CuZnFe2O4 particles were rather potent in inducing DNA lesions. Finally, the carbon nanotubes showed cytotoxic effects and caused DNA damage in the lowest dose tested. The effects were not explained by soluble metal impurities. In conclusion, this study highlights the in vitro toxicity of CuO nanoparticles.

Copper Oxide Nanoparticles Are Highly Toxic: A Comparison between Metal Oxide Nanoparticles and Carbon Nanotubes

A series of nitrogen-containing polymer and carbon spheres were obtained by the sol–gel method. In particular, the nitrogen-rich carbon spheres were prepared by one-pot hydrothermal synthesis in the presence of resorcinol/formaldehyde as carbon precursors and ethylenediamine (EDA) as both a base catalyst and nitrogen precursor, followed by carbonization in nitrogen and activation with CO2. The introduction of EDA to the sol–gel system resulted in structurally bonded nitrogen-containing carbon spheres. The nitrogen doping level and the particle size can be tuned by varying the EDA amount in the reaction mixture. The maximum nitrogen doping level of 7.2 wt % in carbon spheres could be achieved without sacrificing the spherical morphology. The diameter of these carbon spheres (CS) can be tuned in the rage of 50–1200 nm by varying the EDA amount. N2 adsorption analysis showed that the aforementioned activated carbon spheres exhibited high surface area reaching up to1224 m2/g. Ultra high CO2 adsorption capacit...

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Nitrogen enriched porous carbon spheres: attractive materials for supercapacitor electrodes and CO2 adsorption

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have shown promise as an important new class of multifunctional building blocks and innovative tools in a large variety of applications, ranging from nanocomposite materials through nanoelectronics to biomedical devices. Because of their unusual one-dimensional hollow nanostructure and unique physicochemical properties, CNTs are particularly useful as novel drug delivery tools and imaging agents. However, such biomedical applications will not be realized if there is no proper assessment of the potential hazards of CNTs to humans and other biological systems. Although a few reports on the cytotoxicity of CNTs have been published, very little is known about the toxicity at the molecular level, or genotoxicity, of CNTs in mammalian cells. We have for the first time assessed the DNA damage response to multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) in mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells. We found that MWNTs can accumulate and induce apoptosis in mouse ES cells and activate the tumor suppressor protein p53 within 2 h of exposure. Furthermore, we also observed increased expression of two isoforms of base excision repair protein 8-oxoguanine-DNA glycosylase 1 (OGG1), double strand break repair protein Rad 51, phosphorylation of H2AX histone at serine 139, and SUMO modification of XRCC4 following the treatment with MWNTs. A mutagenesis study using an endogenous molecular marker, adenine phosphoribosyltransferase (Aprt), showed that MWNTs increased the mutation frequency by 2-fold compared with the spontaneous mutation frequency in mouse ES cells. These results suggest that careful scrutiny of the genotoxicity of nanomaterials is needed even for those materials, like multiwalled carbon nanotubes, that have been previously demonstrated to have limited or no toxicity at the cellular level.

DNA damage induced by multiwalled carbon nanotubes in mouse embryonic stem cells.

Precious noble metals (such as Pt, Ir) and nonprecious transition metals (e.g., Fe, Co), including their compounds (e.g., oxides, nitrides), have been widely investigated as efficient catalysts for energy conversion, energy storage, important chemical productions, and many industrial processes. However, they often suffer from high cost, low selectivity, poor durability, and susceptibility to gas poisoning with adverse environmental issues. As a low-cost alternative, the first carbon-based metal-free catalyst (C-MFC based on N-doped carbon nanotubes) was discovered in 2009. Since then, various C-MFCs have been demonstrated to show similar or even better catalytic performance than their metal-based counterparts, attractive energy conversion and storage (e.g., fuel cells, metal-air batteries, water splitting), environmental remediation, and chemical production. Enormous progress has been achieved while the number of publications still rapidly increases every year. Herein, a critical overview of the very recent advances in this rapidly developing field during the last couple of years is presented.

Recent Advances in Carbon-Based Metal-Free Electrocatalysts.

Because of their unique photoluminescence and magnetic properties, nanodiamonds (NDs) are promising for biomedical imaging and therapeutical applications. However, these biomedical applications will hardly be realized unless the potential hazards of NDs to humans and other biological systems are ascertained. Previous studies performed in our group and others have demonstrated the excellent biocompatibility of NDs in a variety of cell lines without noticeable cytotoxicity. In the present paper, we report the first genotoxicity study on NDs. Our results showed that incubation of embryonic stem cells with NDs led to slightly increased expression of DNA repair proteins, such as p53 and MOGG-1. Oxidized nanodiamonds (O-NDs) were demonstrated to cause more DNA damage than the pristine/raw NDs (R-NDs), showing the surface chemistry specific genotoxicity. However, the DNA damages caused by either the O-NDs or the R-NDs are much less severe than those caused by multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) observed in our ...

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DNA damage in embryonic stem cells caused by nanodiamonds.

Vertically-aligned carbon nanotubes possess many advantages for a wide range of multifunctional applications. Along with the controlled growth of aligned/micropatterned carbon nanotubes, surface modification of vertically-aligned carbon nanotubes are essential in order to meet specific requirements demanded for particular applications. While many innovative synthetic methods have been developed for controlled growth of vertically-aligned multiwalled and single-walled carbon nanotubes, various interesting physical and chemical approaches have recently been devised for functionalization of the constituent carbon nanotubes in vertically-aligned carbon nanotube arrays with their alignment being largely retained. In this article, recent developments in the controlled growth and modification of vertically-aligned carbon nanotubes for multifunctional applications are reviewed.

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Lin Zhu

Papers

Nitrogen enriched porous carbon spheres: attractive materials for supercapacitor electrodes and CO2 adsorption

DNA damage induced by multiwalled carbon nanotubes in mouse embryonic stem cells.

Recent Advances in Carbon-Based Metal-Free Electrocatalysts.

DNA damage in embryonic stem cells caused by nanodiamonds.

Controlled growth and modification of vertically-aligned carbon nanotubes for multifunctional applications