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Molecular computing holds great promise for diagnosis and treatment of diseases at the molecular level; nevertheless, designing molecular logic gates to operate programmably and autonomously for molecular diagnostics still remains challenging. We designed logic gates on DNA Origami for microRNA analysis. As a demonstration, two indicators of heart failure, microRNA-21 and microRNA-195, were selected as the logic inputs. The logic gates contain two main modules: computation module and output module, performing in a single DNA Origami nanostructure. The computation module recognizes disease indicators, while the output module display different nanoscale symbols, "+" (positive) or "-" (negative), depending on the computing results. We demonstrated that the molecular logic gates worked well with single and two input combinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-assembled DNA origami nanostructures have shown great promise for bottom-up construction of complex objects with nanoscale addressability. Here we show that DNA origami-based 1D nanoribbons and nanotubes are one-pot assembled with controllable sizes and nanoscale addressability with high speed (within only 10-20 min), exhibiting extraordinarily high cooperativity that is often observed in assembly of natural molecular machines in cells (e.g. ribosome). By exploiting the high specificity of DNA-based self-assembly, we can precisely anchor proteins on these DNA origami nanostructures with sub-10 nm resolution and at the single-molecule level. We attach a pair of enzymes (horseradish peroxidase and glucose oxidase) at the inner side of DNA nanotubes and observe high coupling efficiency of enzyme cascade within this confined nanospace. Hence, DNA nanostructures with such unprecedented properties shed new light on the design of nanoscale bioreactors and nanomedicine and provide an artificial system for studying enzyme activities and cascade in highly organized and crowded cell-mimicking environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting activity of Nb and Ta-doped hematite (α-Fe2O3) nanorods was investigated with reference to electronic structures by in situ synchrotron x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS). Current density-potential measurements demonstrate that the PEC activity of α-Fe2O3 nanorods depends strongly on the species and concentrations of dopants. The doping of α-Fe2O3 nanorods with a low level of Nb or Ta can improve their electrical conductivity and thereby facilitate charge transport and reduced electron–hole recombination therein. The photoconversion effects of Nb and Ta-doped α-Fe2O3 by in situ XAS in the dark and under illumination revealed opposite evolutions of the spectral intensities of the Fe L-edge and Nb/Ta L-edge, indicating that charge transfer and a conduction pathway are involved in the photoconversion. Analytic in situ XAS results reveal that the α-Fe2O3 that is doped with a low level of Nb has a greater photoconversion efficiency than that doped with Ta because Nb sites are more active than Ta sites in α-Fe2O3. The correlation between PEC activity and the electronic structure of Nb/Ta-doped α-Fe2O3 is examined in detail using in situ XAS and helps to elucidate the mechanism of PEC water splitting in terms of the electronic structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highly efficient semiconductor photoelectrodes for solar hydrogen production through photocatalytic water splitting are a promising and challenge solution to solve the energy problems. In this work, Ag/Cu2O/ZnO tandem triple-junction photoelectrode was designed and prepared. An increase of 11 times of photocurrent is achieved in the Ag/Cu2O/ZnO photoelectrode comparing to that of the Cu2O film. The high performance of the Ag/Cu2O/ZnO film is due to the optimized design of the tandem triple-junction structure, where the localized surface Plasmon resonance of Ag and the heterojunctions efficiently absorb solar energy, produce, and separate electron-hole pairs in the photocathode. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]