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The negative environmental impacts associated with the usage of Portland cement (PC) in concrete induced intensive research into finding sustainable alternative concrete mixes to obtain “green concrete”. Since the principal aim of developing such mixes is to reduce the environmental impact, it is imperative to conduct a comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA). This paper examines three different types of sustainable concrete mixes, viz., alkali-activated concrete (AAC) with natural coarse aggregates, AAC with recycled coarse aggregates (RCA), and bacterial concrete (BC). A detailed environmental impact assessment of AAC with natural coarse aggregates, AAC with RCA, and BC is performed through a cradle-to-gate LCA using openLCA v.1.10.3 and compared versus PC concrete (PCC) of equivalent strength. The results show that transportation and sodium silicate in AAC mixes and PC in BC mixes contribute the most to the environmental impact. The global warming potential (GWP) of PCC is 1.4–2 times higher than other mixes. Bacterial concrete without nutrients had the lowest environmental impact of all the evaluated mixes on all damage categories, both at the midpoint (except GWP) and endpoint assessment levels. AAC and BC mixes are more expensive than PCC by 98.8–159.1% and 21.8–54.3%, respectively.

Implementation of the next-generation technologies for gene sequencing of venom duct transcriptome has provided a large number of peptide sequences of marine cone snails. Emerging technologies on computational platforms are now rapidly evolving for the accurate predictions of the 3D structure of the polypeptide using the primary sequence. The current report aims to integrate the information derived from these two technologies to develop the concept of structure-aided function assignment of Conus peptides. The proof of the concept was demonstrated using the transcriptomic peptide Am931 of C. amadis. The 3D structure of Am931 was computed using Density Functional Theory (DFT) and the quality of the predicted structure was confirmed using 2D NMR spectroscopy of the corresponding synthetic peptide. The computed structure of Am931 aligns with the active site motif of thioredoxins, possess catalytic disulfide conformation of (+, -)AntiRHHook and selectively modulate the N-terminal Cys3 thiol. These structural features indicate that Am931 may act as a disulfide isomerase and modulate the oxidative folding of conotoxins. Synthetic peptide Am931 provides proof-of-function by exhibiting catalytic activity on the oxidative folding of α-conotoxin ImI and improving the yield of native globular fold. The approach of integration of new technologies in the Conus peptide research may help to accelerate the discovery pipeline of new/improved conotoxin functional., 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 © 2024. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)