Clostridium perfringens is classified into types A to G, and all types produce alpha-toxins; however, C. perfringens type F that is negative for phospholipase C (PLC) activity of alpha-toxin has been isolated from the environment and cases of humans afflicted by food poisoning. This study aimed to elucidate the distribution of PLC-negative C. perfringens type F in sewage influents and effluents. Influents and effluents of two wastewater treatment plants were collected monthly between July 2016 and January 2020 and between August 2018 and January 2020, respectively. Isolation rates of PLC-negative C. perfringens type F from sewage influents and effluents were 38% (33/86) and 22% (8/36), and the numbers of isolates were 43 and 13, respectively. The locus of the enterotoxin gene of all isolates was determined to be in a plasmid with an IS1151 sequence, and multilocus sequence typing revealed that all 17 representative isolates were assigned as sequence type 186. Sequencing of the plc gene of these representativen the sewage of wastewater treatment plants, as it may reflect the hygienic condition of the community, as it would be a pollution source for the environment.  https://www.selleckchem.com/products/cpypp.html  This study shows the persistent existence and genetic characteristics of the alpha-toxin variant in sewage and reveals a lacking mechanism of the alpha-toxin activity and proposes the detection method of C. perfringens, independent of the alpha-toxin activity.The aim of this study was to determine the contribution of the contamination of the health care environment in the acquisition of carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae (CRKP) in a CRKP-prevalent setting. We performed a 3-month prospective study in a 20-bed medical intensive care unit (ICU) by collecting rectal/oral swabs from patients within 3 days of ICU admission and weekly thereafter. We also comprehensively sampled the beds and rooms of patients and instruments for patient care every week. CRKP were detected, genome sequenced, and assigned to clones based on core genome analyses. The survival of four CRKP clones was determined under ICU conditions. Seventeen patients were in the ICU at the start of the study, and 99 were admitted afterwards. Six were positive patients, with four detected on initial screening and two during weekly monitoring. CRKP was detected from 76 of 3,699 (2.1%) environment samples, including from the immediate surroundings of 21 patients (five had CRKP from clinical samples and rroundings may be extensive, as long as routine environment cleaning protocols are appropriate and well implemented, the health care environment is unlikely to be a major source of CRKP colonization and infection in ICU patients. Reducing the high workload for ICU nurses may help minimize CRKP environmental contamination.The flexible structure of an intrinsically disordered protein (IDP) is known to be perturbed by salt concentrations, which can be understood by electrostatic screening on charged amino acids. However, an IDP usually contains more uncharged residues that are influenced by the salting-out effect. Here we have parametrized the salting-out effect into a coarse-grained model using a set of Förster resonance energy transfer data and verified with experimental salt-dependent liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) of 17 proteins. The new model can correctly capture the behavior of 6 more sequences, resulting in a total of 13 when varying salt concentrations. Together with a survey of more than 500 IDP sequences, we conclude that the salting-out effect, which was considered to be secondary to electrostatic screening, is important for IDP sequences with moderately charged residues at physiological salt concentrations. The presented scheme is generally applicable to other computational models for capturing salt-dependent IDP conformations.A Pd-catalyzed trans-selective carbosilylation reaction of alkynes has been developed. The trans-vinylpalladium species, generated through intramolecular syn-carbopalladation of alkynes and subsequent cis-trans isomerization, were captured by hexamethyldisilane to form multisubstituted vinylsilanes. This reaction provides a useful strategy for the stereoselective synthesis of isoquinolinone-containing exocyclic tetrasubstituted vinylsilanes.Nanoparticles are promising mediators to enable nasal systemic and brain delivery of active compounds. However, the possibility of reaching therapeutically relevant levels of exogenous molecules in the body is strongly reliant on the ability of the nanoparticles to overcome biological barriers. In this work, three paradigmatic nanoformulations vehiculating the poorly soluble model drug simvastatin were addressed (i) hybrid lecithin/chitosan nanoparticles (LCNs), (ii) polymeric poly-ε-caprolactone nanocapsules stabilized with the nonionic surfactant polysorbate 80 (PCL_P80), and (iii) polymeric poly-ε-caprolactone nanocapsules stabilized with a polysaccharide-based surfactant, i.e., sodium caproyl hyaluronate (PCL_SCH). The three nanosystems were investigated for their physicochemical and structural properties and for their impact on the biopharmaceutical aspects critical for nasal and nose-to-brain delivery biocompatibility, drug release, mucoadhesion, and permeation across the nasal mucosa. All three nanoforransport of whole PCL_P80 and PCL_SCH nanocapsules with delayed boost of permeation across the nasal mucosa. The correlation between nanoparticle structure and its biopharmaceutical properties appears to be a pivotal point for the development of novel platforms suitable for systemic and brain delivery of pharmaceutical compounds via intranasal administration.A surface with a smart wettability transition has recently been proposed to enhance the boiling heat transfer in either macro- or microscale systems. This work explores the mechanisms of bubble nucleation on surfaces with wettability transitions at controlled temperatures by molecular simulations. The results of the interaction energy at the interface and potential energy distribution of water molecules show that the nanostructure promotes nucleation over the copper surface and causes lower absolute potential energy to provide fixed nucleation sites for the initial generation of the bubble nucleus and shortens the incipient nucleation time, as compared to the mixed-wettability or hydrophilic nanostructure surface. An investigation on more nanostructured surfaces shows that a surface (F) with a wettability transition temperature of 620.0 K has the shortest average incipient nucleation time at 1672 ps with a wall temperature of 634.3 K. The surface with tunable wettability has also a high interfacial thermal conductance at low superheats, but it may not promote the critical heat flux at high superheats.