Preventing nosocomial infection is a major unmet need of our times. Existing air decontamination technologies suffer from demerits such as toxicity of exposure, species specificity, noxious gas emission, environment-dependent performance and high power consumption. Here, we present a novel technology called ZeBox that transcends the conventional limitations and achieves high microbicidal efficiency. In ZeBox, a non-ionizing electric field extracts naturally charged microbes from flowing air and deposits them on engineered microbicidal surfaces. The surfaces three dimensional topography traps the microbes long enough for them to be inactivated. The electric field and chemical surfaces synergistically achieve rapid inactivation of a broad spectrum of microbes. ZeBox achieved near complete kill of airborne microbes in challenge tests (5-9 log reduction) and >90% efficiency in a fully functional stem cell research facility in the presence of humans. Thus, ZeBox fulfills the dire need for a real-time, continuous, safe, trap-and-kill air decontamination technology.

Preventing nosocomial infection is a major unmet need of our times. Existing air decontamination technologies suffer from demerits such as toxicity of exposure, species specificity, noxious gas emission, environment-dependent performance and high power consumption. Here, we present a novel technology called “ZeBox” that transcends the conventional limitations and achieves high microbicidal efficiency. In ZeBox, a non-ionizing electric field extracts naturally charged microbes from flowing air and deposits them on engineered microbicidal surfaces. The surface’s three dimensional topography traps the microbes long enough for them to be inactivated. The electric field and chemical surfaces synergistically achieve rapid inactivation of a broad spectrum of microbes. ZeBox achieved near complete kill of airborne microbes in challenge tests (5–9 log reduction) and $$>90\%$$ > 90 % efficiency in a fully functional stem cell research facility in the presence of humans. Thus, ZeBox fulfills the dire need for a real-time, continuous, safe, trap-and-kill air decontamination technology.

1 5 1 6The E. coli metabolome is an interconnected set of enzymes that has measurable kinetic parameters ascribed for 1 7 the production of most of its metabolites. Flux Balance Analysis (FBA) or Ordinary Differential Equation 1 8 (ODE) models are used to increase product yield using defined media. However, they either give a range (FBA) 1 9 or exact amount (ODE) of metabolite yield which isn't true as the transcriptome diversity of individual cells 2 0 isn't considered. We formulate the metabolic-behaviour of individual cells by using a POpulation SYstems- 1Biology ALgorithm (POSYBAL) which predicts multiple-gene knockouts for increasing industrially relevant 2 2 metabolites. We validate this prediction for producing isobutanol (Heterogenous metabolite) and shikimate 2 3 (Homogenous metabolite) where, the product-yield was increased by 40 times (~2000 ppm) and 42 times 2 4 (~3000 ppm) respectively. Also, we introduce a nitrogen-swap in standard media to its low-nitrogen counterpart 2 5 during post-growth phase to redistribute flux towards non-nitrogenous pathways for increasing overall product-2 6 yield. Further, our model shows growth-phase diversity in bacterial population even under normal glucose-2 7 uptake, portraying a real-world scenario of diverse and robust environment thus, making it evolutionarily 2 8 favourable to threats such as anti-bacterial attack.2 9 3 0