(Funded by the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. National Science Foundation)
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers University, and East China University of Science and Technology in Shanghai have shown that a combination of messenger RNA (mRNA) and a new lipid nanoparticle could help heal damaged lungs. The researchers matched up mRNA with just one unique lipid nanoparticle – ionizable amphiphilic Janus dendrimers – which are organ-specific. When it reaches the lung, the mRNA instructs the immune system to create transforming growth factor beta, a signaling molecule that is used to repair tissue. “This research marks the birth of a new mRNA delivery platform,” said 2023 Nobel laureate Drew Weissman, a co-author of the study. “While using other lipid nanoparticles works great to prevent infectious diseases, … this new platform does not have to be stored at such extremely cold temperatures and is even easier to produce.”

(Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health)
Using the nanostructures and microstructures found on Morpho butterfly wings, scientists at the University of California San Diego have developed a simple and inexpensive way to analyze cancerous tissues. Fibrosis, the accumulation of fibrous tissue, is a key feature of many diseases, including cancer, and evaluating the extent of fibrosis in a biopsy sample can help determine whether a patient’s cancer is in an early or advanced stage. The researchers discovered that by placing a biopsy sample on top of a Morpho butterfly wing and viewing it under a standard microscope, they can assess whether a tumor’s structure indicates early- or late-stage cancer – without the need for stains or costly imaging machines.

(Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation)
Researchers from Oregon State University, The Ohio State University, and the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China, have helped characterize a novel electrocatalyst developed by collaborators at Yale University and helped explain its improved efficiency for deriving methanol from carbon dioxide. The researchers’ dual-site catalyst is the result of combining two different catalytic sites at adjacent locations, separated by about 2 nanometers, on carbon nanotubes. The new design increases the methanol production rate, and less of the electricity used to catalyze the reaction is wasted. “The hybrid catalyst was found to exhibit unprecedented high catalytic efficiencies, nearly 1.5 times higher than observed before,” said Zhenxing Feng, one of the scientists involved in this study.

(Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. National Science Foundation)
Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory; Villanova University; Northwest Missouri State University; Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY in Hamburg, Germany; the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany; the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Hamburg, Germany; the Institute for Photonics and Nanotechnologies in Milano, Italy; and Politecnico di Milano in Italy have observed how electrons, excited by ultrafast light pulses, danced in unison around fullerene (C60) molecules. Researchers measured this dance with unprecedented precision, achieving the first measurement of its kind at the sub-nanometer scale. The synchronized dance of electrons, known as plasmonic resonance, can confine light for brief periods of time. While they’ve been studied extensively in systems from several centimeters across to those just 10 nanometers wide, this is the first time researchers were able to break the field’s “nanometer barrier.”

(Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation)
Researchers at North Carolina State University have demonstrated a new technique that uses light to tune the optical properties of quantum dots. The researchers placed green-emitting perovskite quantum dots in a solution containing either chlorine or iodine. The solution was then run through a microfluidic system that incorporated a light source. The microfluidic environment enabled precise reaction control by ensuring uniform light exposure across small solution volumes, approximately 10 microliters per reaction droplet. The light triggered reactions that made the green-emitting perovskite quantum dots move closer to the blue end of the spectrum when chlorine was present in the solvent and closer to the red end of the spectrum when iodine was present in the solvent.