Plasmonic photothermal polymerase chain reaction (PPT-PCR) is a nucleic acid amplification technique that utilizes the localized surface plasmon resonance effect of plasmonic nanomaterials under the irradiation of light with specific wavelengths to achieve rapid thermal cycling. PPT-PCR is considered as a next-generation PCR technique due to the potential to be applied to the development of point-of-care diagnostics and the fast, sensitive and accurate detection performance. In this study, we present PHANTOM, a proof-of-concept system that functionally integrates plasmonic photothermal PCR, magnetic nanoparticle removal, and swCNT-FET-based label-free electrical readout for rapid molecular diagnostics. The swCNT-FET sensor exhibits high sensitivity, capable of detecting low concentrations of target nucleic acids within minutes after PPT-PCR amplification. Besides, to improve the specificity of the assay, we introduce a hairpin structured primer to generate amplicons with an external single-strand tail that can hybridize with probes modified on the swCNT-FET sensor. With this design, an estimated limit of detection of 1.5 aM (experimentally validated down to 10 aM) was achieved within 20 min.

Lithium-oxygen batteries (LOBs) offer exceptionally high energy density but are limited by poor reversibility and large charging overpotentials owing to sluggish lithium oxide decomposition. We propose a rational Fe-4d dualatom catalyst (DAC) strategy to regulate oxygen evolution and stabilize NO2- redox mediation. Fe-Zr/Nb/Mo pairs are atomically dispersed onto defect-rich nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes (NCNTs) and evaluated as oxygen-electrode catalysts. Among these, Nb-Fe-NCNT exhibits a superior performance, enabling excellent cycling for over 290 cycles with significantly reduced polarization. Electrochemical analysis reveals that Nb-Fe enhances charge-transfer kinetics and sustains low-voltage redox-mediated oxygen evolution while suppressing high-voltage direct Li2O2 oxidation. Ex situ characterization confirms highly reversible Li2O2 formation and decomposition. Density functional theory shows favorable reaction energetics and enhanced electron redistribution, which strengthens mediator interaction. These results demonstrate that metal-dependent electronic synergy in Fe-4d DACs governs oxygen-evolution pathways and provide practical design guidelines for durable, nonprecious catalysts for high-performance LOBs.

Ni-based catalysts have been widely studied as promising alternatives to Pt group metal catalysts in anion exchange membrane water electrolysis. However, their insufficient durability at the membrane electrode assembly (MEA) poses a significant limitation. In this study, we evaluated the performance and durability of Ni₃Mo, PtNi/C, and Pt/C catalysts in MEAs under various intermittent protocols that mimic electricity production from renewable energy sources. In the intermittent protocols, sets of open circuit voltage (OCV) and constant current densities of 0.1 A cm−2 and/or 1 A cm−2 with different duration times were repeated for overall test time of 165 h. The Ni3Mo catalyst demonstrated severe degradation in cell performance for the long OCV duration of 1 h, while shorter exposure of 1 or 30 min presented little degradation, although the metal dissolution still occurred significantly. The cell degradation mainly resulted from phase transformation of the metallic Ni3Mo to Ni(OH)2. The Pt/C catalyst showed substantial degradation in the cell performance when the current density was frequently changed with short duration (1 min) at OCV, resulting from the Pt aggregation. The PtNi/C presented the most stable cell performance under various intermittent protocols, due to the formation of surface Ni hydroxide species that inhibit aggregation. The changes in the overpotentials at cathode, membrane, and anode were further investigated using 3-electrode MEA system. The PtNi/C catalysts were synthesized with various compositions of Pt:Ni ratios, and also the Pt1Ni1/C catalysts were synthesized with various sizes, but the effect of composition and sizes were insignificant for the cell performance.

Natural de novo shoot organogenesis (DNSO) is the spontaneous regeneration of shoots from wound sites outside the shoot apical region through endogenous developmental programs. This regenerative capacity enables plants to recover from severe tissue damage by re-establishing the shoot-root axis. Here, we review current knowledge about the molecular mechanisms of natural DNSO, focusing on transcriptomic and physiological studies in model plants. Accumulating evidence suggests that natural DNSO proceeds through three sequential phases: (i) early wound responses, characterized by the activation of the WIND1-ESR1 module and the establishment of apical-basal auxin asymmetry; (ii) cellular proliferation driven by metabolic and cell-cycle reprogramming; and (iii) cytokininmediated establishment of shoot apical meristem identity. We also discuss how these mechanistic insights have been harnessed for practical applications, including tissue culture-free transformation systems such as the cut-dip-budding (CDB) method, and developmental reprogramming strategies that employ ectopic expression of developmental regulator (DR) genes to induce DNSO in otherwise recalcitrant species. Together, these advances illustrate how understanding natural regeneration can guide the development of simplified, broadly applicable plant transformation technologies.

Covalent ligands represent small molecules including a reactive moiety that forms a covalent bond, enabling the targeting of proteins that are otherwise difficult to modulate. Accurate binding prediction is critical for achieving target specificity and minimizing off-target effects. However, publicly available computational tools remain limited in both accessibility and accuracy. To address this gap, we developed GalaxyCDock, a web server for covalent protein-ligand docking. GalaxyCDock predicts the binding modes of covalent ligands by employing the efficient pose sampling of GalaxyDock2 and a deep learning-based scoring function, GalaxyDock-DL. GalaxyCDock outperformed existing tools (AutoDock4, DOCK6) across standard and newly curated datasets. GalaxyCDock achieved high performance in both re-docking (up to 80%) and cross-docking (up to 61%). Furthermore, GalaxyCDock efficiently serves as a practical alternative to models like AlphaFold3 and Boltz-2 when receptor structure information is available. GalaxyCDock is publicly available at https://galaxy.seoklab.org/cdock. (c) 2026 Elsevier Ltd. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.

Controlling product selectivity in Cu-catalyzed electrochemical CO2 reduction remains challenging, as competing proton-coupled electron transfer pathways are governed by the balance between *CO coupling and protonation kinetics. Here, we demonstrate that this balance is precisely tuned by engineering interfacial water through surface ligand functionalization, without altering the Cu active site's electronic properties. Alkanethiols with distinct terminal groups (-CH3, -COOH, -OH) were anchored on Cu (Cu-UDT, Cu-MUA, Cu-MUO), imparting varying surface hydrophobicity. In situ attenuated total reflectance surface-enhanced infrared absorption spectroscopy (ATR-SEIRAS) reveals that Cu-MUA enforces a strongly hydrogen-bonded water network, whereas Cu-MUO promotes a predominantly free water environment, with minor perturbation of *CO in both cases. Time-resolved SEIRAS demonstrates that the divergent water structures dictate *CO decay kinetics in which Cu-MUA facilitates rapid *CO consumption via C-C coupling, yielding high ethylene selectivity, while Cu-MUO enables preferential *CO protonation to *CHO through enhanced proton supply, steering selectivity toward methane.

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is based on a highly localized electric field (E-field), i.e., hotspot, on plasmonic nanostructures and enables a wide variety of ultrasensitive molecular-fingerprint sensing applications. However, reliably forming and controlling hotspots, and positioning molecules within them to reproducibly obtain maximal and quantitative Raman signals, remains challenging. Here, we designed and synthesized gold nanocrevice-gap nanosnowman particles (AuNCNSs) that feature a superlocalized E-field inside the nanocrevice gap via surface-modified DNA-directed nanostructure growth chemistry. AuNCNSs facilitate a capacitive plasmon mode with an intense, broadly distributed near-field enhancement, yielding a 157-fold amplification (analytical SERS enhancement factor = similar to 3.1 & times; 10(10)). Remarkably, similar to 10% of Raman dyes confined within the nanocrevice gap contribute to similar to 90% of the total SERS intensity, effectively dividing SERS signal generation and target-sensing regions. Further, the Raman dyes adsorbed outside the nanocrevice gap region can be washed away with minimal signal loss, freeing the non-nanocrevice-gap nanoparticle surface for reliable and efficient functional ligand modification such as antibodies or DNA. The SERS tag-linked immunosorbent assay (SLISA) with antibody-modified AuNCNSs can detect as low as 10 fM viral targets, which is a 100-fold better sensitivity than conventional ELISA results for the same target, and the dynamic range is >5 orders of magnitude, ranging from 10 fM to >1 nM. Importantly, the specificity of the AuNCNS immunoassay is extraordinary, with almost undetectable SERS signals for nonspecific influenza targets, suggesting that AuNCNSs can be promising bioprobe platforms with high sensitivity and reliable target quantification capability by super-colocalizing Raman dyes and E-field inside the nanocrevice gap along with highly reliable and stable ligand modification on open non-NCG particle surfaces.

Robust inelastic electron tunneling electroluminescence (EL) and current rectification represent two key milestones in molecular electronics. We report strongly rectified EL and current (rectification ratio up to 102-103) in bottom-up fabricated tunnel junctions where a noble-metal nanosphere (20-200 nm) is bridged to a planar metal thin film by structurally symmetric molecules (1,4-benzenedithiol or 1,4-diethynylbenzene). Both electrodes are made of the same noble metal (M = Ag or Au), so the junctions are compositionally symmetric. The rectification ratio is strongly dependent on the electrode geometry and linker chemistry: The rectification behavior is strongly suppressed when the nanosphere is replaced by a nanocube of comparable size or when the nanosphere diameter increases from 20 to 200 nm. Pronounced rectification occurs with dithiol (M-S) and diethynyl (M-C equivalent to C) linkers but not with diisocyanide (M-CN). These observations cannot be explained by simple electrostatic asymmetry of electrodes but instead arise from curvature-dependent metal-molecule coupling, specifically the enhanced electronic coupling at under-coordinated surface atoms of the nanosphere. Overall, the results show that a structurally symmetric molecule can rectify when placed between compositionally identical but geometrically inequivalent electrodes. These findings open a new route to scalable, bottom-up molecular optoelectronic diodes whose function is encoded in the geometry and chemistry of nominally symmetric junctions.

Here we report an intermetallic Pt5Ce/C oxygen reduction catalyst with intrinsic antioxidant functionality. Under electrochemical conditions, Pt5Ce/C forms Pt-skin surfaces. Subsurface Ce atoms electronically tune Pt-skin to promote H2O2-scavenging, achieving a two-fold faster reaction rate than antioxidant-coupled catalysts. Pt5Ce/C thus delivers excellent catalytic activity and durability for oxygen reduction reaction.