Bacillus spp. can exert plant growth-promoting effects and biocontrol effects after effective colonization, and bacterial chemotaxis toward plant root exudates is the initial step to colonize. Under biotic stress, plants are able to alter their root exudates to attract or avoid different types of microbes. Hence, Bacillus chemotaxis toward root exudates after pathogen infection is crucial for exerting their beneficial effects. In this study, the Bacillus amyloliquefaciens OR2-30 strain, which exhibited greater chemotaxis ability toward maize root exudates after Fusarium graminearum infection, was screened from 156 rhizosphere microorganisms. The infected maize root exudates were further confirmed to improve the swarming and biofilm formation ability of the OR2-30 strain. Chemotaxis, swarming, and biofilm formation ability were able to influence bacterial colonization. Indeed, the the OR2-30 strain displayed more effective colonization ability in the maize rhizosphere after F. graminearum inoculation. Moreover, lipopeptides produced by OR2-30 were identified as iturins and responsible for suppressing F. graminearum growth. Further study showed that lipopeptides suppressed the growth of F. graminearum by inhibiting conidia formation and germination, inducing reactive oxygen species production and causing cell death in mycelium. Eventually, the OR2-30 strain increased maize resistance against F. graminearum. These results suggested that maize root exudates could recruit B. amyloliquefacines OR2-30 after F. graminearum infection, and that OR2-30 then suppresses the F. graminearum by producing lipopeptides, such as iturins, to protect maize.Synthetic nanomaterials possessing biomolecular-chaperone functions are good candidates for modulating physicochemical interactions in many bioapplications. Despite extensive research, no general principle to engineer nanomaterial surfaces is available to precisely manipulate biomolecular conformations and behaviors, greatly limiting attempts to develop high-performance nanochaperone materials. Here, we demonstrate that, by quantifying the length (-SCxR±, x = 3-11) and charges (R- = -COO-, R+ = -NH3+) of ligands on Au25 gold nanochaperones (AuNCs), simulating binding sites and affinities of amyloid-like peptides with AuNCs, and probing peptide folding and fibrillation in the presence of AuNCs, it is possible to precisely manipulate the peptides’ conformations and, thus, their amyloidosis via customizing AuNCs nanointerfaces. We show that intermediate-length liganded AuNCs with a specific charge chaperone peptides’ native conformations and thus inhibit their fibrillation, while other types of AuNCs destabilize peptides and promote their fibrillation. We offer a microscopic molecular insight into peptide identity on AuNCs and provide a guideline in customizing nanochaperones via manipulating their nanointerfaces.The employment of catalysts is an effective way to improve ammonium perchlorate (AP) decomposition performance during the combustion of composite solid propellants. Understanding the micromechanism of catalysts at the atomic level, which is hard to be observed by experiments, can help attain more excellent decomposition properties of AP. In this study, first-principles simulations based on density functional theory were used to explore the effect of the graphene catalyst and iron oxide (Fe2O3) catalyst on AP decomposition. Considering the transfer of a H atom during AP decomposition, the most stable adsorption sites for aforementioned catalysts were found the top of the C atom of the graphene surface with the adsorption energy of -0.378 eV and the top of the Fe atom of the Fe2O3 surface with the adsorption energy of -1.596 eV. On the basis of adsorption results, our transition state calculations indicate that, in comparison to control groups, graphene and Fe2O3 can reduce the activation energy barrier by ∼19 and ∼37%, respectively, to promote AP decomposition with a transfer process of a H atom on the catalyst surface. Our calculations provide a way for explaining the micromechanism of the catalytic activity of graphene and Fe2O3 nanocomposites in AP decomposition and guide experimental applications of graphene and Fe2O3 for catalytic reactions.Styryl flavonoids can be formed during the thermal processing of meats and flavonoid-enriched foods, showing high potentials in the prevention of different diseases. In this study, the protective effects of several styryl flavonoids against advanced glycation end product (AGE)-induced inflammation were evaluated, with 6-C-(E-phenylethenyl)-naringenin (6-PN) showing the strongest activity among them. The results indicated that 6-PN significantly ameliorated AGE-induced damages in human umbilical vein endothelial cells, including inhibition of pro-inflammatory cytokines and reactive oxygen species (ROS) production through downregulating the protein levels of the receptor for AGEs (RAGE) and NADPH oxidase. Notably, 6-PN possessed a much higher bioavailability than its parental compound, naringenin. Furthermore, 6-PN also promoted the activation of the nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) signaling pathway that was suppressed by AGEs, and the anti-inflammatory effects of 6-PN disappeared when the cells were treated with ML385, a Nrf2 inhibitor. Hence, 6-PN might inhibit AGE-induced inflammation by the RAGE/ROS/Nrf2 signaling pathway.Pepper mild mottle virus (PMMoV), an RNA virus, is one of the most devastating pathogens in pepper crops and has a significant influence on global crop yields. PMMoV poses a major threat to the global shortage of pepper plants and other Solanaceae crops due to the lack of an effective antiviral agent. In this study, we have developed a plant immune inducer (vanisulfane), as a „plant vaccine” that boosts plant immunity against PMMoV, and studied its resistance mechanism. The protective activity of vanisulfane against PMMoV was 59.4%. Vanisulfane can enhance the activity of defense enzymes and improve the content of chlorophyll, flavonoids, and total phenols for removing harmful free radicals from plants. Furthermore, vanisulfane was found to enhance defense genes. Label-free quantitative proteomics would tackle disease resistance pathways of vanisulfane. According to Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analysis, differentially abundant proteins (DAPs) are mainly involved in starch and sucrose metabolism, photosynthesis, MAPK signaling pathway, and oxidative phosphorylation pathway. These results are crucial for the discovery of new pesticides, understanding the improvement of plant immunity and the antiviral activity of plant immune inducers.Herein we report that dimensional reduction from three-dimensional nanoscale metal-organic frameworks (nMOFs) to two-dimensional nanoscale metal-organic layers (nMOLs) increases the frequency of encounters between photosensitizers and oxygen and facilitates the diffusion of singlet oxygen from the nMOL to significantly enhance photodynamic therapy. The nMOFs and nMOLs share the same M12-oxo (M = Zr, Hf) secondary building units and 5,15-di-p-benzoatoporphyrin (DBP) ligands but exhibit three-dimensional and two-dimensional topologies, respectively. Molecular dynamics simulations and experimental studies revealed that the nMOLs with a monolayer morphology enhanced the generation of reactive oxygen species and exhibited over an order of magnitude higher cytotoxicity over the nMOFs. In a mouse model of triple-negative breast cancer, Hf-DBP nMOL showed 49.1% more tumor inhibition, an 80% higher cure rate, and 16.3-fold lower metastasis potential than Hf-DBP nMOF.The selectivity and efficiency of Cu-catalyzed CO2 or CO electroreduction are known to be sensitive to the electrolyte composition. However, in aqueous media, changes to pH and ionic composition do not alter the electrokinetic profile of C2 product formation, commonly invoked to proceed via a rate-limiting pH-independent C-C coupling step to form an oxyanionic *CO dimer. We hypothesize that new mechanistic pathways can be exposed in an aprotic solvent-based electrolyte, where inhibited interfacial charge stabilization can favor pathways with electroneutral intermediates resulting from proton-coupled electron-transfer (PCET) steps from an exogenous donor. We herein report CO electroreduction to higher-order products on a polycrystalline Cu catalyst with dimethyl sulfoxide as the solvent and phenol as the proton donor. CO is reduced principally to C2 products including ethylene, acetate, ethylene glycol, and ethane with negligible methane production. In stark contrast to aqueous electrolytes, we observe a low Tafel slope (27 ± 1 mV dec-1) and Nernstian dependence on proton activity for ethylene formation, suggesting a dramatically different mechanism involving quasi-equilibrated PCET steps. This work highlights the critical role of the solvent environment and proton donor in dictating the mechanistic landscape of CO electroreduction, exposing new strategies for tuning product selectivity in hydrocarbon electrosynthesis.The direct synthesis of ketones via acyl Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling of widely available acyl chlorides is a central transformation in organic synthesis. Herein, we report the first mechanochemical solvent-free method for highly chemoselective synthesis of ketones from acyl chlorides and boronic acids. This acylation reaction is conducted in the solid state, in the absence of potentially harmful solvents, for a short reaction time and shows excellent selectivity for C(acyl)-Cl bond cleavage.The total synthesis of the antibiotic amycolamicin with a hybrid molecular architecture composed of five ring systems, which exhibits potent antibacterial activity against a wide range of drug-resistant bacteria, has been achieved in a convergent manner. A protecting-group-free intramolecular Diels-Alder reaction of a hydroxy tetraenal intermediate promoted by two equivalents of Et2AlCl, which proceeds highly diastereoselectively via an endo-equatorial transition state, has been utilized to construct the trans-decalin moiety of the molecule. The full structure of amycolamicin was assembled by a completely stereoconvergent N-acylation of a northern N-glycoside unit (α-anomer/β-anomer = 11.1) with a southern β-keto thioester segment followed by installation of the central tetramic acid moiety.Thiolation of carboxylic acids using a disulfide reagent having tetrafluoropyridinyl groups is described. The light-mediated process is performed using an acridine-type photocatalyst. Primary, secondary, tertiary, and heteroatom-substituted carboxylic acids can be thiolated, and the method can be applied to the late-stage modification of a range of naturally occurring compounds and drugs. The fluorinated pyridine fragment is believed to enable the C-S bond formation. The resulting sulfides were used as redox-active radical precursors.Density functional theory-based molecular dynamics (DFT-MD) has been widely used for studying the chemistry of heterogeneous interfacial systems under operational conditions. We report frequently overlooked errors in thermostated or constant-temperature DFT-MD simulations applied to study (electro)catalytic chemistry. Our results demonstrate that commonly used thermostats such as Nosé-Hoover, Berendsen, and simple velocity-rescaling methods fail to provide a reliable temperature description for systems considered. Instead, nonconstant temperatures and large temperature gradients within the different parts of the system are observed. The errors are not a „feature” of any particular code but are present in several ab initio molecular dynamics implementations. This uneven temperature distribution, due to inadequate thermostatting, is well-known in the classical MD community, where it is ascribed to the failure in kinetic energy equipartition among different degrees of freedom in heterogeneous systems (Harvey et al.