Right- and left-handed helical G-quartet nanostructures are synthesized for the first time simultaneously via 5′-guanosine monophosphate (GMP) self-assembly, and further applied as circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) templates.

The formation of chirality of G-quartet materials has been of concern for a long time, however, its helix-handedness of G-quartet materials is still ambiguous, as well as the novel circularly...

Two typical features of uncontrolled inflammation, cytokine storm and lymphopenia, are associated with the severity of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), demonstrating that both innate and adaptive immune responses are involved in the development of this disease. Recent studies have explored the contribution of innate immune cells to the pathogenesis of the infection. However, the impact of adaptive immunity on this disease remains unknown. In order to clarify the role of adaptive immune response in COVID-19, we characterized the phenotypes of lymphocytes in PBMCs from patients at different disease stages using single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) technology. Dynamics of the effector cell levels in lymphocytes revealed dysregulated adaptive immune responses in patients with severe disease. A new cluster of excessively activated CD8 T cells (Tea) was further identified, which displayed exhausted phenotypes and diminished function of antigen recognition. Interestingly, expression of PTMA, the proprotein of Tα1, was significantly increased in a group of highly proliferating CD8 T cells with memory stem cell features. We further showed that Tα1 significantly promoted the proliferation of activated T cells in vitro and relieved the lymphopenia in COVID-19 patients. Our data suggest that protection of T cells from excessive activation might be critical for the prevention of severe COVID-19.