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The three-year COVID-19 pandemic 'has' caused a wide range of medical, social, political, and financial implications. Since the end of 2020, various mutations and variations in SARS-CoV-2 strains, along with the immune escape phenomenon, have emerged. There is an urgent need to identify a relatively stable target for the development of universal vaccines and drugs that can effectively combat both SARS-CoV-2 strains and their mutants. Currently, the main focus in treating SARS-CoV-2 lies in disrupting the virus's life cycle. The main protease (Mpro) is closely associated with virus replication and maturation and plays a crucial role in the early stages of infection. Consequently, it has become an important target for the development of SARS-CoV-2-specific drugs. This review summarizes the recent research progress on the novel coronavirus's main proteases, including the pivotal role of Mpro in the virus's life cycle, the structure and catalytic mechanism of Mpro, the self-maturation mechanism of Mpro, the role of Mpro in virus immune escape, the current methods of developing antiviral drugs targeting Mpro, and the key drugs that have successfully entered clinical trials. The aim is to provide researchers involved in the development of antiviral drugs targeting Mpro with systematic and comprehensive information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, the production and demand for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have increased owing to the increasing number of electric vehicles and electronic products. This surge has considerably increased the volume of spent LIBs, leading to environmental damage and economic losses. Thus, the recycling of spent LIBs is critical because it enables the recovery of valuable metals and mitigates environmental impacts. This work introduces a novel environmentally friendly and biodegradable deep eutectic solvent (DES) for leaching valuable metals from waste LIBs, which includes ascorbic acid (VC) derived from fruits and dimethyl-beta-propiothetin chloride (DMSP) derived from fish attractants. It is noteworthy that the utilization of chemical reagents in this study was significantly diminished, with VC and DMSP accounting for 16.5% and 8.5% of the total solvents, respectively—which decreased recycling costs and alleviated the environmental burden. The leaching of LiNi1/3Co1/3Mn1/3O2 (LNCM111) cathode materials was rapidly achieved at a low temperature of 50 °C within 14 minutes. The coordinated action of Cl− ions and the reducing effect of VC in DMSP resulted in a 99% leaching efficiency for Lithium, Cobalt, Manganese, and Nickel. In addition, the leaching mechanism was comprehensively investigated via kinetics and density functional theory calculations. This efficient, easy-to-operate, low-cost, and sustainable leaching process involving the DES demonstrates considerable potential for recycling LIBs, offering an environmentally friendly and effective solution for LIB reuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories predicted that shear promotes desorption, but due to the presence of factors such as aggregation effects, it is difficult to observe how shear influences the adsorption and desorption of individual protein molecules. In this study, we employed high-throughput single-molecule tracking and molecular dynamics simulations to investigate how shear flow affects the adsorption kinetics of plasma proteins (including human serum albumin, immunoglobulin G, and fibrinogen) at solid-liquid interfaces. Over the studied shear rate range of 0 - 10 3 s -1 , shear stress did not trigger the protein desorption. Notably, we observed a significant increase, up to two orders of magnitude, in the adsorption rate constants k a , in the dilute limit at solid-liquid interfaces. However, this shear-induced increase in k a diminished with increasing the protein concentrations. At least in the scenarios studied, these trends were consistent across all three types of proteins and two types of surfaces investigated. Through a systematic analysis combining control experiments, coarse-grained, and all-atom molecular dynamics simulations, we identified that the shear-induced increase in k a could be attributed to enhanced protein rotational diffusion, thereby increasing the likelihood of favorable surface proximity for adsorption., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2025 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Modulating electronic structure to balance the requirement of both hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) is crucial for developing bifunctional catalysts. Herein, phase transformation engineering is utilized to separately regulate catalyst structure, and the designed NiFe@Ni/Fe-MnOOH schottky heterojunction exhibits remarkable bifunctional electrocatalytic activity with low overpotentials of 19 and 230 mV at 10 mA cm -2 for HER and OER in 1M KOH, respectively. Meanwhile, an anion-exchange membrane water electrolyzer employing NiFe@Ni/Fe-MnOOH as electrodes shows low voltages of 1.487/1.953 V at 10/1000 mA cm -2 , and operating over 200 h at 1000 mA cm -2 . Combining theoretical calculations and experiments reveal that phase transformation engineering can differentially regulate the active phases of HER/OER. In the HER, Ni/Fe-MnOOH and metallic NiFe act as the *OH and *H acceptors respectively to accelerates the water dissociation and subsequent Heyrovsky/Tafel step. While in the OER, the significant Jahn-Teller effect of Mn 3+ induces the surface reconstruction from Ni/Fe-MnOOH to Ni/Fe-MnO 2 . The formative high value Mn 4+ can modify the M-O hybridization and activate the lattice oxygen mechanism, which is pivotal for breaking the restriction of volcanic relationship and reducing OER overpotential. These findings provide valuable design guidelines for high-performance multi-functional electrocatalysts via phase transformation engineering., (© 2025 Wiley‐VCH GmbH.)