Brain diseases, such as glioblastoma and neurological disorders, present significant diagnostic and therapeutic challenges due to their complex anatomical locations. To address these limitations, researchers are actively developing non-invasive, high-resolution imaging technologies to obtain detailed anatomical and functional information, enabling early diagnosis and the formulation of effective treatment strategies. Rare earth nanomaterials, including nanocrystals and complexes, have emerged as highly promising agents in brain imaging due to their unique magnetic and optical properties. Notably, the incorporation of rare earth structural proteins has significantly enhanced imaging quality while ensuring metabolic safety. Surface chemical modifications further improve blood-brain barrier (BBB) penetration efficiency through receptor-mediated transport. Additionally, the rich energy level transitions of lanthanide ions enable tunable second near-infrared (NIR-II) fluorescence emission, offering deep tissue penetration, minimal autofluorescence interference, and responsiveness to dynamic signals in the brain. These properties hold important implications for guiding glioblastoma surgical resection and precision therapy. This review focuses on the design strategies and applications of rare earth nanomaterials in brain imaging and imaging-guided monitoring and therapy, while also addressing current challenges and future prospect for their clinical translation.

Prelithiation is a strategy to address the active lithium loss in Li ion hybrid capacitors (LICs) during initial charge–discharge process. Lithium oxalate (Li 2 C 2 O 4 ) emerges as a promising prelithiation additive due to its high lithium content and superior atmospheric stability. However, its practical application is hindered by sluggish reaction kinetics and a high decomposition potential. Herein, we develop a Li 2 C 2 O 4 recrystallization strategy combined with Fe 2 O 3 catalysts (R‐LCO@Fe 2 O 3 ), enhancing the electrochemical activity of Li 2 C 2 O 4 and lowering its decomposition potential from approximately 4.76 to 4.28 V vs . Li + /Li. Also, the designed prelithiation additive facilitates the formation of a LiF‐rich and compact solid electrolyte interphase, which is beneficial for extending the cycling lifespan of LICs. In activated carbon//graphite LICs, the R‐LCO@Fe 2 O 3 additive increases the initial charge capacity to 288.27 mAh g −1 , while the discharge capacity is significantly improved from 23.67 to 42.15 mAh g −1 . As a result, LICs incorporating R‐LCO@Fe 2 O 3 exhibit stable cycling performance over 2500 cycles, with a capacity retention of 75.93%. In contrast, the LICs without additives suffer a more rapid capacity fade, retaining 31.59% after 325 cycles. Overall, this work demonstrates a simple, cost‐effective, and scalable strategy for preparing prelithiation materials in LIC applications.

Hydrogen (H2) storage/release using dibenzyltoluene/perhydro-dibenzyltoluene (DBT/H18-DBT) provides a safe route for H2 transportation but suffers from high dehydrogenation temperature due to the large C-H dissociation energy of the H18-DBT side rings. In this work, we design a single Pt atom catalyst with well controlled Pt-O coordination number (CNPt-O). The Pt single atom catalyst (SAC) with CNPt-O ≈ 4 on the step site of CeO2 results in a unique reaction mechanism of preferential dehydrogenation of the H18-DBT middle ring, enabling H2 production from H18-DBT at 200°C - a temperature far below those reported in the literature (≥ 260°C), which achieves a 7 times higher H2 evolution rate ( r H 2 ) of 83430.0 molH2 molPt -1 h-1 at 300°C as compared to the published values with stable H18-DBT conversion of ∼90% during 50 repeated hydrogen storage/release cycles.

Prelithiation is a strategy to address the active lithium loss in Li ion hybrid capacitors (LICs) during initial charge-discharge process. Lithium oxalate (Li2C2O4) emerges as a promising prelithiation additive due to its high lithium content and superior atmospheric stability. However, its practical application is hindered by sluggish reaction kinetics and a high decomposition potential. Herein, we develop a Li2C2O4 recrystallization strategy combined with Fe2O3 catalysts (R-LCO@Fe2O3), enhancing the electrochemical activity of Li2C2O4 and lowering its decomposition potential from approximately 4.76 to 4.28 V vs. Li+/Li. Also, the designed prelithiation additive facilitates the formation of a LiF-rich and compact solid electrolyte interphase, which is beneficial for extending the cycling lifespan of LICs. In activated carbon//graphite LICs, the R-LCO@Fe2O3 additive increases the initial charge capacity to 288.27 mAh g-1, while the discharge capacity is significantly improved from 23.67 to 42.15 mAh g-1. As a result, LICs incorporating R-LCO@Fe2O3 exhibit stable cycling performance over 2500 cycles, with a capacity retention of 75.93%. In contrast, the LICs without additives suffer a more rapid capacity fade, retaining 31.59% after 325 cycles. Overall, this work demonstrates a simple, cost-effective, and scalable strategy for preparing prelithiation materials in LIC applications.

Lithium-carbon dioxide (Li-CO2) batteries are promising energy storage systems for CO2 utilization and carbon neutrality but are plagued by severe parasitic reactions, sluggish CO2 redox kinetics, and unstable electrodeelectrolyte interfaces, leading to large polarization and rapid decay of cycle life. Developing electrolyte systems beyond conventional dilute designs is therefore highly desirable. Herein, a localized high-concentration electrolyte is constructed by rationally balancing high donor numbers (DN) and low DN solvents with lithium salts. This design suppresses electrolyte side reactions while maintaining high ionic conductivity, thereby effectively addressing interfacial instability and kinetic limitations in Li-CO2 batteries. Furthermore, the high DN solvents dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) preferentially coordinates with Li+, promoting the solution mechanism that reduces overpotential and enhances cycle life. Meanwhile, the low DN co-solvent tetraethylene glycol dimethyl ether (TEGDME), featuring superior oxidative stability, contributes to improved interfacial stability at lithium anode. The optimized electrolyte establishes a tailored local solvation structure that regulates ion coordination and interfacial reactions. Notably, the assembled Li-CO2 battery presents low overpotential of 1.51 V and superior cycling performance up to 1200 h based on the localized high-concentration electrolyte. This work demonstrates that electrolyte solvation engineering opens a new avenue for high-performance Li-CO2 battery toward practical carbon-neutral energy technologies.

Rare earth elements (REEs) are critical strategic materials for modern high-tech industries. Yet conventional chemical mining technologies for ion-adsorption REE ores suffer from drawbacks including prolonged leaching cycles, weak ionic selectivity, and severe ammonium-nitrogen contamination, which constrain the sustainable development of the REE industry. To address these critical challenges, this study demonstrates an ecofriendly biometallurgical strategy using Aspergillus sp. (Tsinghua rare earth microbial 786, TR-786), an indigenous fungal chassis isolated from mining environments. This strain undergoes metabolic reprogramming under iron limitation to secrete organic acids, siderophores, and amphiphilic fatty acids, presenting a unique ternary synergistic mechanism for selective REE capture and enhanced mineral wetting. In a 500 L pilot assay on ion-adsorption REE ores, our system achieved nearly 100% leaching of the exchangeable and water-soluble REE fraction. By drastically suppressing Al3+ and Ca2+codissolution, this approach demonstrated a distinct selectivity advantage over traditional chemical lixiviants, for example, (NH4)2SO4 and MgSO4. To realize a closed-loop biometallurgical process, we engineered Aspergillus oryzae to surface-display dual lanthanide-binding tags, enabling selective REE recovery from complex bioleachates with an 87% enrichment efficiency. This integrated biofactory circumvents the technical and environmental bottlenecks of traditional chemical leaching, offering a green, scalable solution for sustainable REE utilization.

DNA is an ideal medium for information storage, offering ultra-high density and long-term stability, making it a promising solution to the global data explosion. However, conventional in vitro DNA storage systems remain constrained by their static nature, limiting dynamic data writing, updating, or self-replication. Inspired by genetic memory and stimulus-responsive behaviors of living cells, in vivo DNA storage leverages cells as both storage and processing units, translating cellular information behaviors into engineered storage architectures for adaptive and autonomous data management. This review systematically outlines the development of in vivo DNA storage, focusing on two core strategies: synthetic information-based storage, which achieves long-term data preservation through DNA encoding and cellular self-replication in an inheritance-mimicking manner, and memory-based digital recording, which enables real-time DNA writing and updating in response to artificial stimuli via a memory-mimicking route. We further discuss how functional integration-such as dynamic data updating, encryption, and logical operations-can expand the versatility of in vivo biological data systems toward cell-inspired information storage and computation. Finally, we address current challenges in storage density, editing efficiency, and cellular stability, and propose future directions for next-generation in vivo DNA storage platforms.

The pursuit of high-performance lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) demands advanced anode materials beyond conventional graphite. Cu2SnS3 (CTS) is a high-capacity anode candidate for lithium-ion batteries but suffers from poor conductivity and severe volume expansion. Herein, a novel Cu2SnS3/porous graphene oxide (CTS/PGO) nanocomposite is designed and synthesized via a rapid microwave-assisted method. The in-plane porous PGO scaffold effectively accommodates volume change and facilitates Li+ diffusion with shortened transport pathways. The optimal PGO loading is determined to be 180 mg. The CTS/PGO-180 electrode delivers an initial discharge capacity of 3765.07 mAh & sdot;g- 1 with an initial coulombic efficiency of 72.45%, and exhibits outstanding long-term cyclability, retaining 1354.50 mAh & sdot;g- 1 after 500 cycles at 1 A g-1. Kinetic analysis based on scan-ratedependent cyclic voltammetry (0.2-1.0 mV s- 1) indicates a predominantly diffusion-controlled process for the CTS/PGO-180 electrode, with a capacitive contribution reaching 64% at 1.0 mV s-1. The unique porous architecture significantly shortens Li+ diffusion path and accelerates ion transport kinetics. This work demonstrates the great potential of the CTS/PGO composite and offers a viable strategy for designing high-capacity, durable anodes for next-generation LIBs.

Lithium metal batteries (LMBs) offer exceptional energy density, yet their practical application is limited by unstable solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) formation and sluggish Li+ transport, particularly under low-temperature conditions. Here, a carbonate electrolyte employing a cosolvent and dual-salt strategy is proposed to simultaneously tailor the Li+ solvation and interfacial chemistry of LiPF6-based electrolytes. The introduction of ethyl methyl carbonate weakens the strong Li+-ethylene carbonate coordination, while difluoro(oxalato)borate anions preferentially undergo interfacial reduction to construct a robust, inorganic-rich SEI. This tailored solvation environment affords a low Li+ diffusion energy barrier and effectively suppresses lithium dendrite formation. As a result, the electrolyte delivers exceptional low-temperature performance, achieving an ionic conductivity of 1.013 mS cm-1 at -30 °C and a reduced desolvation energy of 66.84 kJ mol-1. High-loading LFP∥Li full cells exhibit a specific capacity of 163.06 mAh g-1 at 0.2C and retain over 80% capacity after 200 cycles at 25 °C. Even at -30 °C, the cells maintain 58% capacity retention after 100 cycles. This work highlights the interplay between solvation chemistry, SEI composition, and interfacial ion transport, offering a viable design paradigm for high-performance carbonate electrolytes in low-temperature LMBs.

Rare-earth elements (REEs) are critical components of low-carbon technologies and advanced defense systems. However, their conventional extraction and separation processes, which rely on energy-intensive hydrometallurgy with harsh chemical reagents, pose significant environmental challenges. Synthetic biology offers a transformative alternative by enabling the programmable dissolution, precise molecular recognition, and selective capture of REEs under mild conditions. Specifically, engineered microbes can be designed to secrete tailored organic acids, siderophores, and redox-active metabolites for bioleaching REEs from ores, tailings, and industrial wastes. Concurrently, high-affinity biological bindersu2014such as lanmodulin, lanthanide-binding peptides, and de novo-designed proteinsu2014provide picomolar-level affinity and tunable selectivity ideal for biosorption. The integration of these functional motifs into advanced platforms, including immobilized sorbents, magnetic composites, and elastin-like polypeptides, enables continuous and regenerable REE recovery with minimal chemical input. Collectively, these biological strategies support an environmentally considerable approach to REE extraction and separation from diverse sources. Future efforts should focus on machine-learning-guided protein design, enhancing biomolecule stability, developing integrated leaching-adsorption bioreactors, improving tolerance to complex leachates, and incorporating biological modules into industrial flowsheets. These advances collectively establish synthetic biology as the foundation for a new paradigm in sustainable rare-earth production.

The rapid expansion of electronic waste (E‐waste) has positioned it as the fastest‐growing waste stream globally, containing valuable reserves of rare earth elements, precious metals, and critical raw materials. While conventional pyro‐ and hydrometallurgical processes dominate current recycling practices, their energy‐demanding operations and reliance on toxic reagents raise substantial ecological concerns. Synthetic‐biology‐based bioremediation offers a promising alternative, utilizing genetically modified microorganisms for selective bioleaching, biosorption, and bioaccumulation. Cutting‐edge advances in metabolic pathway engineering and synthetic gene circuits have significantly improved microbial capabilities, enabling higher metal selectivity, enhanced tolerance to acidic conditions, and faster recovery kinetics in complex E‐waste matrices. Nevertheless, critical bottlenecks persist in maintaining microbial consortia stability under industrial conditions, in achieving phase‐selective extraction from polymetallic waste streams, and scaling up continuous bioreactor operations. This review systematically evaluates advancements in microbial chassis for E‐waste recycling, focusing on genome editing tools and enzyme optimization. A synergistic framework combining protein engineering, adaptive laboratory evolution, and hybrid bioelectrochemical system reactors is further proposed to overcome existing limitations. Implementing these engineered biological systems can transform urban mining practices, supporting circular economy goals through efficient metal recovery and resource reuse.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a refractory pneumonia-causing pathogen due to the antibiotic resistance and the characteristics of persisting inside its host cell. Lysostaphin is a typical bacteriolytic enzyme for degrading bacterial cell walls via hydrolysis of pentaglycine cross-links, showing potential to combat multidrug-resistant bacteria. However, there are still grand challenges for native lysostaphin because of its poor shelf stability and limited bioavailability. To tackle these limitations, a modular assembly strategy is proposed to actively engineer the native lysostaphin, involving nanoassembly preparation via fusing with lysine-rich polypeptide. The engineered lysine component significantly improves the membrane-penetration capability of lysostaphin, greatly increasing its intracellular antibacterial activity by 12-fold compared to wild-type lysostaphin. Notably, the half-life of the nanoassembled lysostaphin is approximately 13 times longer than that of its native counterpart, greatly outperforming other studies. Most importantly, the shelf stability of our engineered lysostaphin is significantly improved, retaining over 99.9% of antibacterial activity after 12 weeks at room temperature. This modular assembly strategy successfully enhances the overall performance of lysostaphin, offering great promise for a platform technique to refine enzymatic material for widespread clinical demands.

Spider silk exhibits a unique combination of high strength and self‐recoil capability through supercontraction, crucial for cyclic loading applications. However, reproducing these properties in synthetic polymer or recombinant protein fibers remains challenging, primarily due to their rigid molecular structures or monotonous cross‐linking networks that limit molecular mobility and hinder structural recovery. Here, reversibly damping protein fibers are engineered by developing a dual‐dynamic network fiber chemistry (DNFC) strategy. The resulting fibers integrate high‐density hydrogen bonds and dynamic imine cross‐links with entropy‐driven elasticity, overcoming the limitations of static networks. The DNF exhibits high mechanical strength and up to 88.95% damping efficiency during cyclic loading, the latter surpassing that of regenerated silk and polymer fibers. This reversible energy dissipation arises from a unique humidity‐responsive structural recovery mechanism. The process involves hydration‐triggered chain recoil and reversible β‐sheet rezipping through inter‐domain hydrogen bond rearrangement, followed by dehydration‐driven imine bond reformation. The approach establishes a versatile platform for engineering dynamically adaptive materials, pioneering an innovative paradigm in biomimetic protein fiber technology through modular chemical cross‐linking strategies.

Nickel-based materials can perform redox reactions in aqueous alkaline electrolytes, promising to assemble lowcost and high-safety electrochemical devices with attractive energy/power density. Nevertheless, the poor intrinsic electronic/ionic conductivity and low redox activity restrict these materials' reversible capacity and rate performance. Herein, amorphous NiO-coated NiCo metallic organic framework nanosheets (NiCo-MOF/NiO) which combine the advantages of heterostructure and two-dimensional structure are fabricated via a simple hydrothermal reaction and atomic layer deposition. In general, the two-dimensional structure accelerates the diffusion of ions along the material surface, resulting in rapid ion diffusion kinetics. In-situ Raman results suggest that constructing heterostructure can improve the redox kinetics of NiCo-MOF and facilitate the oxidation of Ni ions toward high valence state, leading to effectively boosted capacitance. As a result, the NiCo-MOF/NiO electrode with optimized Ni/Co ratio and NiO coating thickness exhibits a high areal capacitance of 3010 mF cm- 2 at 5 mA cm- 2 and remains 62.5 % of initial capacitance over 5000 cycles, much better than that of pure NiCo MOF (2150 mF cm- 2). In addition, the asymmetric supercapacitor (ASC) constructed with NiCo-MOF as the positive electrode and commercial activated carbon (AC) as the negative electrode exhibits a large operating voltage window of 1.6 V, with an areal capacitance of 34.4 mF cm- 2 at a current density of 11 mA cm- 2, and retains 77.8 % of its initial capacity after 5000 cycles. This work may provide a reference for advanced Ni-based electrode design by constructing heterostructures.

DNA digital storage features high storage density, low power consumption, and extended digital recovery time. However, conventional DNA preservation methods suffer from limitations like low DNA loading and complex recovery processes. In this study, we develop a liquid crystal-guided DNA information preservation platform (LDIPP) assembled from diverse lengths of DNA molecules ranging from 688 base pairs to 4.8 mega-base pairs and cationic surfactants. The thermotropic LDIPP provides encoded DNA information with high density loading, thermoplasticity, antimicrobial, and anti-enzymatic properties. Notably, DNA information was nondestructively recovered by manipulating the assembly structure using specific salt solutions and bioamplified through microbial fermentation. By mineralizing inorganic crystals on LDIPP, the preservation lifetime is expected to be increased by nearly an order of magnitude at -20°C. The LDIPP platform offers enhanced DNA data loading, nondestructive recovery, and customizable macroscopic features, making it a promising option for long-term information preservation in the rapidly advancing field of DNA storage.

High transductive loss at tissue injury sites impedes repair. The high dissipation characteristics in the electromechanical conversion of piezoelectric biomaterials pose a challenge. Therefore, supramolecular engineering and microfluidic technology is utilized to introduce slide-ring polyrotaxane and conductive polypyrrole to construct stress-electric coupling hydrogel microspheres. The molecular slippage mechanism of slide-ring structure stores and releases mechanical energy, reducing mechanical loss, the piezoelectric barium titanate enables stress-electricity conversion, and conjugated π-electron movement in conductive network improves the internal electron transfer efficiency of microspheres, thereby reducing the loss in stress-electricity conversion for the first time. Compared to traditional piezoelectric hydrogel microspheres, the stress-electric coupling efficiency of low-dissipation microspheres increased by 2.3 times, and the energy dissipation decreased to 43%. At cellular level, electrical signals generated by the microspheres triggered Ca2+ influx into stem cells and upregulated the cAMP signaling pathways, promoting chondrogenic differentiation. Enhanced electrical signals induced macrophage polarization to the M2 phenotype, reshaping inflammation and promoting tissue repair. In vivo, the low-dissipation microspheres restored low-loss transduction between tissues, alleviated cartilage damage, improved behavioral outcomes, and promoted the treatment of osteoarthritis in rats. Therefore, this study proposes a new strategy for restoring low-loss transduction between tissues, particularly in mechanically sensitive tissues.

Structural proteins, with exceptional structural versatility and tailored properties, have inspired the design of mechanically robust biomaterials with diverse applications. Nevertheless, the heterologous biosynthesis of high-performance structural proteins faces inherent challenges due to their characteristic high molecular weight, highly repetitive sequences, and intricate folding patterns, frequently leading to reduced production yields, structural defects, and compromised mechanical properties. To overcome these limitations, researchers have adopted various strategies to refine sequence architectures and optimize heterologous expression systems of recombinant structural proteins. This review comprehensively summarizes recent advances in biosynthetic engineering for the heterologous production of structural proteins, highlighting key modifications in expression hosts, innovative molecular design approaches, and optimized cultivation conditions. These methodologies provide valuable insights for enhancing the yield and stability of high-molecular-weight recombinant structural proteins. Additionally, by evaluating current challenges and future directions in structural protein design and biosynthesis, this review seeks to further innovation in the development of advanced structural protein-based biomaterials.

Nitrogen dopant has been shown to significantly enhance the photocatalytic performance of CeO2, while most current nitrogen doping preparation methods are directly derived from CeO2. In this work, we offer a novel and advanced approach to prepare nitrogen-rich doped ceria with excellent photocatalytic performances by a thermal decomposition of CeCO3OH in an NH3 contained atmosphere. It was found that the prepared CeCO3OH-NH3 sample had the highest nitrogen doping content and oxygen vacancy concentration. The breaking of chemical bonds in CeCO3OH and the formation of new bonds in ceria promoted the incorporation of nitrogen dopants, both on the surface and in the bulk, and the NH3-containing atmosphere boosted the nitrogen doping in the ceria lattice. Moreover, CeCO3OH-NH3 also exhibited a higher TC (tetracycline) photodegradation ratio (68.35 %) and a higher hydrogen production rate (45.74 mu mol center dot h-1 center dot g-1) via hydrolysis. Radical trapping experiments confirmed that photogenerated h+ and e-played key roles in TC degradation, and the possible mechanism of the photo-catalytic performance enhancement in nitrogen-doped ceria was discussed. The developed nitrogen doping method for CeO2 and the findings of this work may further benefit the high-performance ceria-based catalysts design and offer a new understanding of the nitrogen doped ceria.