Polycrystalline BiFeO3 nanoparticles (size 80–120 nm) are prepared by a simple sol–gel technique. Such nanoparticles are very efficient for photocatalytic decomposition of organic contaminants under irradiation from ultraviolet to visible frequencies. The BiFeO3 nanoparticles also demonstrate weak ferromagnetism of about 0.06 μB/Fe at room temperature, in good agreement with theoretical calculations.
A new approach has been developed to design organic polymers using topology diagrams. This strategy enables covalent integration of organic units into ordered topologies and creates a new polymer form, that is, covalent organic frameworks. This is a breakthrough in chemistry because it sets a molecular platform for synthesizing polymers with predesignable primary and high‐order structures, which has been a central aim for over a century but unattainable with traditional design principles. This new field has its own features that are distinct from conventional polymers. This Review summarizes the fundamentals as well as major progress by focusing on the chemistry used to design structures, including the principles, synthetic strategies, and control methods. We scrutinize built‐in functions that are specific to the structures by revealing various interplays and mechanisms involved in the expression of function. We propose major fundamental issues to be addressed in chemistry as well as future directions from physics, materials, and application perspectives.
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are noncoding RNAs with 18–26 nucleotides; they pair with target mRNAs to regulate gene expression and produce significant changes in various physiological and pathological processes. In recent years, the interaction between miRNAs and their target genes has become one of the mainstream directions for drug development. As a large-scale biological database that mainly provides miRNA–target interactions (MTIs) verified by biological experiments, miRTarBase has undergone five revisions and enhancements. The database has accumulated >2 200 449 verified MTIs from 13 389 manually curated articles and CLIP-seq data. An optimized scoring system is adopted to enhance this update’s critical recognition of MTI-related articles and corresponding disease information. In addition, single-nucleotide polymorphisms and disease-related variants related to the binding efficiency of miRNA and target were characterized in miRNAs and gene 3′ untranslated regions. miRNA expression profiles across extracellular vesicles, blood and different tissues, including exosomal miRNAs and tissue-specific miRNAs, were integrated to explore miRNA functions and biomarkers. For the user interface, we have classified attributes, including RNA expression, specific interaction, protein expression and biological function, for various validation experiments related to the role of miRNA. We also used seed sequence information to evaluate the binding sites of miRNA. In summary, these enhancements render miRTarBase as one of the most research-amicable MTI databases that contain comprehensive and experimentally verified annotations. The newly updated version of miRTarBase is now available at https://miRTarBase.cuhk.edu.cn/.
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