In this review, we explore the physical mechanisms of biological processes such as protein folding and recognition, ligand binding, and systems biology, including cell cycle, stem cell, cancer, evolution, ecology, and neural networks. Our approach is based on the landscape and flux theory for nonequilibrium dynamical systems. This theory provides a unifying principle and foundation for investigating the underlying mechanisms and physical quantification of biological systems.
Scalable production of earth-abundant, easy-to-prepare, and cost-effective electrocatalysts for the hydrogen evolution reaction （HER） is essential for sustainable energy-based systems. Herein, we systematically studied the electrocatalytic HER performance of a self-supported ternary Co0.5Mn0.5P/carbon cloth （CC） nanomaterial prepared using a hydrothermal reaction and phosphorizafion process. Electrochemical tests demonstrated that the ternary Co0.5Mn0.5P/CC nanomaterial could be a highly active electrocatalyst in acidic media, with overpotentials of only 41 and 89 mV, affording current densities of 10 and 100 mA.cm-2, respectively, and a Tafel slope of 41.7 mV.dec-1. Furthermore, the electrocatalyst exhibited superior stability, with 3,000 cycles of cyclic voltammetry from -0.2 to 0.2 V at a scan rate of 100 mV.s-1 and 40 h of static polarization at a fixed overpotential of large-scale hydrogen production. 83 mV, indicating its potential for
Artificial nanopores have become promising tools for sensing DNA.Here,we report a new technique for sensing DNA through a conical-shaped nanopore embedded in track-etched polyethylene terephthalate(PET)membrane.Two different streptavidin-conjugated monovalent DNA probes were prepared that can bind to two distinct segments(at either end) of the target DNA.The size of target DNA-linked to the two streptavidin-conjugated monovalent DNA probes is double that of the individual probes.By precisely controlling the tip diameter of the conical nanopore embedded in the PET polymer,events due to the translocation of the streptavidin-conjugated monovalent DNA probes through the nanopore can be filtered and purposely undetected,whereas the current pulses due to the translocation of the target DNA-induced selfassembled complexes can be detected.The two streptavidin-conjugated DNA probes cannot be linked by multimismatched DNA.Therefore,multi-mismatched(nonspecific) DNA will not induce any current pulse signatures.The current pulse signatures for the self-assembled complex can be used to confirm the presence of the target DNA.The size-dependent detection of self-assembled complexes on the molecular level shows strong promise forthe detection of biomolecules without interference from the probes.
Prostate cancer is the most common malignancy in men lack of efficient early diagnosis and therapeutics,calling for effective molecular probes.Herein,we performed cell-based systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment（cell-SELEX） to obtain specific recognition of human prostate cancer cells PC-3M.Four aptamers were successfully obtained that can bind to target cells with high affinity and specificity.A 51-nt truncated sequence named Xq-2-C1 was identified after further elaborative analysis on the secondary structure.More importantly,the achieved aptamer Xq-2-C1 not only demonstrated excellent specific to target cells,but also revealed specific recognition to clinical prostate cancer tissue.The tissue imaging results showed that Xq-2-C1 had better recognition ratio for clinical prostate cancer tissue samples（85%） compared to the random sequence（9%）.These results demonstrate that these newly generated aptamers would furnish potential applications in the early diagnosis and clinical treatment of prostate cancer.
