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Quorum sensing is a well-known term for describing bacterial cell–cell communication. Bacteria use quorum sensing pathways to respond to external factors such as nutrient availability, defense mechanisms, and coordinate host toxic behaviors such as biofilm formation, virulence production, and other pathogenesis. Discovery of novel compounds which inhibit quorum sensing without being antibiotic are currently emerging fields. Herein, the library of fifteen benzo[d]thiazole/quinoline-2-thiol bearing 2-oxo-2-substituted-phenylethan-1-yl compounds was designed, synthesized and evaluated to find novel quorum sensing inhibitors. Firstly, compounds were evaluated for their growth inhibitory activities at high concentrations up to 1000 μg mL−1 toward Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Under our conditions, twelve compounds showed moderate growth inhibitory activities in the concentration tested. To our delight, three compounds 3, 6 and 7 do not affect the growth of the bacteria which were chosen for the evaluation of quorum sensing inhibitor activities. In the LasB system, our compounds 3, 6, 7 showed promising quorum-sensing inhibitors with IC50 of 115.2 μg mL−1, 182.2 μg mL−1 and 45.5 μg mL−1, respectively. In the PqsR system, no activity observed suggesting that the selectivity of the compound toward the LasB system. In addition, 7 showed the moderate anti-biofilm formation of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Docking studies revealed that 3, 6 and 7 binding to the active site of Pseudomonas aeruginosa quorum sensing LasR system with better affinity compared to reference compounds 4-NPO. Finally, computation calculations suggest that compounds are a good template for further drug development.

The synthesis and screening of several fusaric acid (FA) and analogues against five common clinical pathogens (gram-positive and gram-negative) and in vitro hemolytic activity assay in human red blood cells, for the first time, were reported. The biological results reveal that FA and its analogues exhibited moderate antimicrobial activities. Compounds 2–5 and 7 showed growth inhibitory activity in gram-positive bacteria. Compounds 6 and 9 showed growth inhibitory activity in both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. None of the compounds induce hemolysis, which is potent for future drug development on this template. In addition, the structure–activity relationship and docking studies are discussed.

Quorum sensing is a well-known term for describing bacterial cell-cell communication. Bacteria use quorum sensing pathways to respond to external factors such as nutrient availability, defense mechanisms, and coordinate host toxic behaviors such as biofilm formation, virulence production, and other pathogenesis. Discovery of novel compounds which inhibit quorum sensing without being antibiotic are currently emerging fields. Herein, the library of fifteen benzo[

Purpose This study aimed to demonstrate the role of fractional concentration of exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO) in association with Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) guidelines for treatment of adult patients with asthma. Methods It was a prospective and randomized study. The symptomatic asthmatic patients were randomly divided into two groups: GINA group (followed GINA guidelines; N = 86) or GINA + FeNO group (followed GINA guidelines + FeNO for titration of inhaled corticosteroids - ICS; N = 90). They were followed-up for 9 months. Results In GINA group, 37.2% patients had no treatment and 62.8% patients discontinued treatment vs. 40.0% and 60.0% in GINA + FeNO, respectively. After 3, 6 and 9 months of treatment, the percentage of mild, moderate and severe asthma showed no significant difference between the two groups. At 9th month, Δ moderate asthma (reduction) in GINA + FeNO group was significantly higher than in the GINA group (−22.0% vs. −11.6%; P = 0.018). The improvement of asthma control test (ACT) score was not different between the groups at 9th month (12 ± 6 vs. 10 ± 5; P > 0.05); the level of FeNO reduction in GINA + FeNO group was significantly higher than that in GINA group (−42 ± 11 vs. −35 ± 9; P = 0.022). The daily dose of ICS in GINA + FeNO group was significantly lower than that in GINA group (397 ± 171 vs. 482 ± 240 mcg and 375 ± 203 vs. 424 ± 221 mcg; respectively) at the end of 6 and 9 months. Conclusion The use of FeNO in association with GINA guidelines has a beneficial role for accurate daily dose of ICS in adult patients with asthma.

Aiming at the deployment optimization of complex Internet of Things (IoT) systems, we propose a new multi-objective optimization algorithm using multiple indicators with reinforcement learning, called MIEA-RL. In MIEA-RL, a set of evaluation indicators are employed to guide the evolution of population, while a Q-learning method is designed to manage these indicators in an efficient way during the search. To be specific, each candidate indicator is determined by the performance improvement of the population selected by the current indicator. Moreover, the search biases of different indicators can be adaptively balanced according to a Q-learning table. Accordingly, the convergence and diversity can be maintained effectively while the algorithm complexity is not increased. Finally, the MIEA-RL is applied to resolve the real-world IoT optimization instances in the experiment. Results show the proposed algorithm is effective and efficient to handle with these problems.

Correction for ‘Benzo[d]thiazole-2-thiol bearing 2-oxo-2-substituted-phenylethan-1-yl as potent selective lasB quorum sensing inhibitors of Gram-negative bacteria’ by Tung Truong Thanh et al., RSC Adv., 2021, 11, 28797–28808, DOI: 10.1039/D1RA03616E.

The severe infection is becoming a significant health problem which threaten the lives of patients and the safety and economy of society. In the way of finding new strategy, antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) - an important part of host defense family, emerged with tremendous potential. Up to date, huge numbers of AMPs has been investigated from both natural and synthetic sources showing not only the ability to kill microbial pathogens but also propose other benefits such as wound healing, anti-tumor, immune modulation. In this review, we describe the involvements of AMPs in biological systems and discuss the opportunity in developing AMPs for clinical applications. In the detail, their properties in antibacterial activity is followed by their application in some infection diseases and cancer. The key discussions are the approaches to improve biological activities of AMPs either by modifying chemical structure or incorporating into delivery systems. The new applications and perspectives for the future of AMPs would open the new era of their development., Graphical abstract Unlabelled Image

Aiming at the micro-grid energy scheduling, this paper proposes a bio-objective optimization model of the economic and emission dispatch, where two conflicting objectives of the fuel costs and pollution emission are constructed. In order to resolve this model, a multi-objective artificial bee colony (MOABC) algorithm is proposed by using the non-dominated sorting and best-candidate strategies. Especially, an external archive is used to preserve the non-dominated solutions and the best-candidate strategy is to select the best non-dominated solutions to maintain the diversity of Pareto optimal Solutions (PS). An experiment is conducted via comparing IBEA and BC-MOABC on a set of test instances. The results show that the BC-MOABC obtains better results in terms of the convergence on PF. Furthermore, we apply BC-MOABC to resolve the micro-grid energy scheduling optimization problems. Experimental results show that the proposed model and algorithm can reasonably arrange the distributed generations and reduce the system cost and gas emissions.