The fungi-microalgae consortium processs has emerged as one of the most promising biological wastewater treatment technologies due to its environmental friendliness, high treatment efficiency, energy conservation, carbon reduction potential, and the ability to achieve wastewater resource utilization. This study summarizes the development history of the fungi-microalgae consortium technology, explains the possible formation mechanisms and influencing factors of the fungi-microalgae consortiums, reviews the research progress in the application of this technology in wastewater treatment, and finally makes an outlook on its future development prospects. The aim is to provide theoretical reference and practical guidance for further research and engineering applications of fungi-microalgae consortium technology.

Membrane distillation (MD) is a promising technology for wastewater reuse. However, its industrial applications are severely limited by inherent membrane fouling issues and the challenge of concentrate disposal. To address these bottlenecks, a novel self-cleaning catalytic membrane was developed by integrating heterogeneous Fenton catalysis with the MD process, enabling synergistic pollutant degradation and water recovery from wastewater. It was fabricated by grafting iron oxychloride (FeOCl) catalytic layers onto a hydrophobic polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) substrate, where polydopamine self-assembly and a silane coupling agent were employed as the bridging medium for stable grafting. The as-prepared membrane exhibited excellent heterogeneous Fenton catalytic activity toward efficient pollutant elimination, endowing the membrane with superior self-cleaning and anti-fouling performance. Moreover, the modified membrane delivers outstanding MD separation performance, achieving a substantially higher water flux than the pristine PTFE membrane even under prolonged operation, while maintaining robust long-term stability. Finally, the membrane proved effective in treating diverse refractory wastewaters, including those containing reactive brilliant blue KN-R dye, sodium dodecyl sulfate surfactant and the emerging contaminant tetracycline. This study offers valuable insights into the catalytic modification of hydrophobic membranes, highlighting the potential of catalytic membranes in an integrated Fenton-MD process to simultaneously degrade pollutants and recover water, thereby advancing the industrial implementation of MD technology in wastewater treatment.

The development of a bifunctional electrocatalyst with high efficiency, high stability, and low cost is of great significance in practical applications of electrocatalytic water splitting. Herein, a self-supporting bifunctional electrocatalyst with a NiFe layered double hydroxide/Fe2O3/Ni3S2 heterostructure (NiFe LDH/Fe2O3/Ni3S2/IF) for hydrogen evolution and oxygen evolution reactions (HER/OER) is synthesized by the self-corrosion of iron foam (IF) and hydrothermal strategies. The constructed NiFe LDH/Fe2O3/Ni3S2/IF hierarchical heterostructure was not only beneficial to expose active sites and promote charge/mass transfer but also generate a superhydrophilic/superaerophobic surface, thereby accelerating the reaction kinetics to improve the HER/OER activity. Therefore, NiFe LDH/Fe2O3/Ni3S2/IF exhibited superior overpotentials of 226.2 and 162.8 mV for the OER and HER at 100 mA cm-2, respectively. NiFe LDH/Fe2O3/Ni3S2/IF was employed as both the cathode and the anode to assemble a device for overall water splitting and displayed a voltage of 1.55 V at 10 mA cm-2. The overall water splitting device was coupled with a solar cell to simulate a solar-powered water splitting system, resulting in a superior solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency of 15.16%. This work can promote the development of clean energy sources such as solar hydrogen production.

Over the past decades, many forests have been converted to monoculture plantations, which might affect the soil microbial communities that are responsible for governing the soil biogeochemical processes. Understanding how reforestation efforts alter soil prokaryotic microbial communities will therefore inform forest management. In this study, the prokaryotic communities were comparatively investigated in a secondary Chinese fir forest (original) and a reforested Chinese fir plantation (reforested from a secondary Chinese fir forest) in Southern China. The results showed that reforestation changed the structure of the prokaryotic community: the relative abundances of important prokaryotic families in soil. This might be caused by the altered soil pH and organic matter content after reforestation. Soil profile layer depth was an important factor as the upper layers had a higher diversity of prokaryotes than the lower ones (p < 0.05). The composition of the prokaryotic community presented a seasonality characteristic. In addition, the results showed that the dominant phylum was Acidobacteria (58.86%) with Koribacteraceae (15.38%) as the dominant family in the secondary Chinese fir forest and the reforested plantation. Furthermore, soil organic matter, total N, hydrolyzable N, and NH4+−N were positively correlated with prokaryotic diversity (p < 0.05). Also, organic matter and NO3-−N were positively correlated to prokaryotic abundance (p < 0.05). This study demonstrated that re-forest transformation altered soil properties, which lead to the changes in microbial composition. The changes in microbial community might in turn influence biogeochemical processes and the environmental variables. The study could contribute to forest management and policy-making.

Bioremediation of azo dye wastewater has been recognized as the most promising approach. However, azo dye biodecolorization is usually performed using free bacterial cells under anaerobic conditions, which has issues in practical application like solid–liquid separation, sensitivity to toxic dyes, and reusability. In this work, we adopt cell immobilization strategy to solve these problems and investigate the biodecolorization of cationic red X-GRL (X-GRL), a typical azo dye, by immobilized cells of Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 (MR-1). Results indicated that under aerobic conditions, immobilized cells of MR-1 could effectively decolorize 100 mg/L X-GRL, while its free cells could hardly do it under the same conditions. X-GRL biodecolorization by immobilized MR-1 was affected by initial dye concentration, number and size of immobilized beads, static or shaking culture, medium pH, and incubation temperature, but above 83

In the context of hydrogen production through water electrolysis, the development of efficient and stable electrocatalysts is of paramount importance. However, the creation of cost-effective electrocatalysts poses a significant challenge. In this study, a P and Nb co-doped NiFe2O4 nanosheet is designed and grown on Fe foam (referred to as P, Nb-NiFe2O4/FF). The P, Nb-NiFe2O4/FF exhibits a distinctive crystalline/amorphous hetero-structure, and the co-doping of P and Nb in the material leads to the exposure of additional catalytic active sites, optimization of the electronic structure, and enhancement of charge conductivity. Additionally, the P, Nb-NiFe2O4/FF possesses a superhydrophilic surface for the enhancement of charge/mass transfer at interface and a superaerophobic surface, facilitating the efficient release of gas. The P, Nb-NiFe2O4/FF demonstrates remarkable oxygen evolution reaction (OER) and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) activities, achieving overpotential as low as 247 mV and 127 mV, respectively, to attain the current density response of 100 mA cm-2. Based on the high bifunctional activities, the P, Nb-NiFe2O4/FF requires only a working voltage of 1.56 V to obtain the current density of 10 mA cm-2 in overall water splitting. Furthermore, the overall water splitting device of P, Nb-NiFe2O4/FF is integrated with a commercial solar cell to simulate a solar-powered water splitting system, resulting in as superior solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency of 15.11%.

Hydrogen production by electrocatalytic water splitting is considered to be an effective and environmental method, and the design of an electrocatalyst with high efficiency, low cost, and multifunction is of great importance. Herein, we developed a crystalline NiFe phosphide (NiFeP)/amorphous P-doped FeOOH (P-FeOOH) heterostructure (defined as P-NiFeOxHy) as a high-efficiency multifunctional electrocatalyst for water electrolysis. The NiFeP nanocrystals provide remarkable electronic conductivity and plenty of active sites, the amorphous P-FeOOH improves the adsorption energy of oxygen-containing species, and the crystalline/amorphous heterostructure with superhydrophilic and superaerophobic surface generates synergistic effects, providing plentiful active sites and efficient charge/mass transfer. Benefiting from this, the designed P-NiFeOxHy displays ultralow overpotentials of 159.2 and 20.8 mV to achieve 10 mA cm-2 for oxygen evolution reaction and hydrogen evolution reaction, and also shows the superior performance of urea oxidation reaction with a low voltage of 1.37 V at 10 mA cm-2 in 1 M KOH with 0.33 M urea. In-situ Raman spectra and ex-situ XPS analysis were also used to investigate the catalytic process and reveal the surface structure evolution of P-NiFeOxHy under electrochemical oxidation. Accordingly, the designed P-NiFeOxHy is employed as both cathode and anode to assemble into the urea-assisted water electrolysis device, which can reach 10 mA cm-2 with a low 1.36 V and could be further driven by a solar cell. The work reveals a design of superior activity, cost-effective and multifunctional electrocatalysts for water splitting.

This review summarizes the recent progress of organocatalytic and biocatalytic asymmetric reductive amination (ARA), a challenging but important topic for drug discovery and the pharmaceutical industry. At present, ARA can be divided into three categories: metal catalysis, organic catalysis, and biocatalysis. In the past decade, transition metal-catalysed ARA has been well established. Organocatalytic ARA has emerged as a powerful alternative to metal-catalysed ARA, the hydrogen sources used in organocatalytic ARA are usually Hantzsch esters, benzothiazolines, boranes, and hydrosilanes, which require Lewis base or phosphoric acid catalysts to activate them to give secondary chiral amines. It is worth mentioning that biocatalytic ARA has made remarkable progress in the last decade, amino acid dehydrogenases, amine dehydrogenases, opine dehydrogenases and imine reductases have been successfully used in ARA.

对现有关于城市污水处理中微塑料的研究成果进行了综述,系统阐述了城市污水处理厂中微塑料的来源、特征、类型及其在污水处理系统中的迁移与归趋情况等,并在此基础上进一步提出防止污水厂中微塑料污染的建议.

The Cover Feature depicts the iconic main building of Jiangsu Ocean University. The foundation represents the substrate, while the intermediary levels symbolize the presence of reducing agents. The pinnacle of the building signifies the resulting product. The left trajectory illustrates the realm of organocatalysis. Conversely, the right trajectory elucidates the field of biocatalysis, introducing AADHs, AmDHs, OpDHs, and IREDs. Cover design by Qian Zhou and Fanjing Meng. More information can be found in the Review by Y. Cao et al.

Compared with ordinary azo dye pollutants, metal complex azo dyes are usually more recalcitrant and have more serious harm to our environment. This study focused on biodecolorization of acid blue 193 (AB 193), a typical metal complex azo dye, by Shewanella oneidnesis MR-1 (MR-1) under anaerobic conditions with neutral red (NR) as electron shuttle. The results indicated that effective biodecolorization of AB 193 by MR-1 was dependent on the presence of NR as electron shuttle. At presence of 1-5 mu M NR, MR-1 could successfully decolorize AB 193, but hardly decolorized it without NR added. NR was found to be able to significantly improve decolorization capacity of MR-1 by accelerating electron transfer between dyes and cells. And the optimal biodecolorization parameters gotten by response surface methodology (RSM) were temperature 30.1oC, pH 7.0, 52.7 mg/L of initial AB 193 concentration and 3.5 mu M of NR dosage, respectively to achieve maximum AB 193 decolorization (95.98%) after 144 h. Furthermore, the phytotoxicity of AB 193 to rice was significantly reduced during the decolorization process.

Avian pathogenic Escherichia coli (APEC) is a specific group of extraintestinal pathogenic E. coli that causes a variety of extraintestinal diseases in chickens, ducks, pigeons, turkeys, and other avian species. These diseases lead to significant economic losses in the poultry industry worldwide. However, owing to excessive use of antibiotics in the treatment of infectious diseases, bacteria have developed antibiotic resistance. The development of multidrug efflux pumps is one important bacterial antibiotic resistance mechanism. A multidrug efflux pump, MdtH, which belongs to the major facilitator superfamily of transporters, confers resistance to quinolone antibiotics such as norfloxacin and enoxacin. LsrR regulates hundreds of genes that participate in myriad biological processes, including mobility, biofilm formation, and antibiotic susceptibility. However, whether LsrR regulates mdtH transcription and then affects bacterial resistance to various antibiotics in APEC has not been reported. In the present study, the lsrR mutant was constructed from its parent strain APECX40 (WT), and high-throughput sequencing was performed to analyze the transcriptional profile of the WT and mutant XY10 strains. The results showed that lsrR gene deletion upregulated the mdtH transcript level. Furthermore, we also constructed the lsrR- and mdtH-overexpressing strains and performed antimicrobial susceptibility testing, antibacterial activity assays, real-time reverse transcription PCR, and electrophoretic mobility shift assays to investigate the molecular regulatory mechanism of LsrR on the MdtH multidrug efflux pump. The lsrR mutation and the mdtH-overexpressing strain decreased cell susceptibility to norfloxacin, ofloxacin, ciprofloxacin, and tetracycline by upregulating mdtH transcript levels. In addition, the lsrR-overexpressing strain increased cell susceptibility to norfloxacin, ofloxacin, ciprofloxacin, and tetracycline by downregulating mdtH transcript levels. Electrophoretic mobility shift assays indicated that LsrR directly binds to the mdtH promoter. Therefore, this study is the first to demonstrate that LsrR inhibits mdtH transcription by directly binding to its promoter region. This action subsequently increases susceptibility to the aforementioned four antibiotics in APECX40.

To explore an e ffi cient photocatalyst for NO pollution, a direct Z -scheme photocatalytic system is successfully fabricated by coupling Bi 2 WO 6 with NH 2 -UiO-66 via a simple hydrothermal synthesis technique. The Z -scheme system promotes the NO photocatalytic oxidation activity with an optimum NO removal rate of 79%, which is 2.7 and 1.2 times that obtained by using only pristine Bi 2 WO 6 and NH 2 -UiO-66, respectively. Simultaneously, superior selectivity for converting NO to NO 3 (cid:1) /NO 2 is observed. The enhanced photocatalytic performance of the Bi 2 WO 6 /NH 2 -UiO-66 hybrids is attributed to the following two aspects: (i) large speci fi c area of NH 2 -UiO-66, which exposes more active sites and is bene fi cial to the adsorption and activation of NO; (ii) outstanding Z -scheme structure constructed between BiWO 6 and NH 2 -UiO-66, which can improve the e ffi ciency of the separation of electron – hole pairs and preserves the strong oxidation ability of hybrids. ESR analysis shows that $ O 2 (cid:1) and $ OH contribute to NO removal. A possible photocatalytic mechanism of NO oxidation on the direct Z scheme photocatalyst (BWO/2NU) under visible light irradiation is proposed. This work displays the BWO/2NU hybrid's potential for treating low-concentration air pollutants, and the proposed Z -scheme photocatalyst design and promotion mechanism may inspire more rational synthesis of highly e ffi cient photocatalysts for NO removal.

The ability of an electrochemically active bacterium, Shewanella oneidensis MR-1, to decolorize azo dye cationic red X-GRL (X-GRL) was investigated. S. oneidensis MR-1 showed a high decolorization capability for X-GRL under anaerobic conditions. The Mtr respiratory pathway was proved to be involved in the extracellular decolorization of X-GRL. The decolorization efficiency of S. oneidensis MR-1 was significantly inhibited when the initial X-GRL concentration was over 200 mg L-1. Increasing the inoculum volume of S. oneidensis MR-1 could obviously promote the X-GRL decolorization. The 100 mg L-1 X-GRL and 6% (v/v) inoculum volume were chosen as the optimal parameter. Under such a condition, almost all of X-GRL (100 mg L-1) could be completely reduced after 12-h incubation at the pH range of 5.5-8.0 and temperature range of 30-40 degrees C. Salinity in the medium also affected X-GRL decolorization. Lactate and citric acid were found to be the suitable electron donors for X-GRL decolorization. Although the genotoxicity increased slightly, the phytotoxicity of X-GRL in the decolorization process was significantly reduced by S. oneidensis MR-1.

Microbial reduction decolorization is a promising strategy for cationic azo dye pollution remediation, but the reduction mechanism is unclear yet. In this work, the anaerobic reduction decolorization mechanism of cationic red X-GRL (X-GRL) by Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 (MR-1) was investigated from both intracellular and extracellular aspects. The exogenous additional riboflavin treatment test was used to analyze the extracellular reduction mechanism of X-GRL, and the actual role of riboflavin during the reduction of X-GRL was identified by three-dimensional fluorescence analysis for the first time. The proteinase K and the electron competitor treatment tests were used to analyze the intracellular reduction mechanism of X-GRL. Moreover, the effect of external environment on the reduction mechanism of X-GRL was elucidated by the decolorization performance of MR-1 wild type and its mutants, ΔomcA/mtrC, ΔmtrA, ΔmtrB and ΔcymA, under different external pH conditions. The results indicated that X-GRL could be decolorized by MR-1 in both extracellular and intracellular spaces. The extracellular decolorization of X-GRL could be caused by Mtr respiratory pathway or the indirect reduction of riboflavin, while the intracellular decolorization might occur due to the intracellular reduction depending on CymA pathway and a NADH-dependent reduction catalyzed by intracellular azoreductases. Furthermore, the proportion of extracellular decolorization decreased, whereas that of intracellular decolorization increased as the environmental pH rose.

纳米银(AgNPs)因其优越的抗菌、导电、催化等性能,被广泛应用于工业领域和日常生活中,成为当前产量和用量最高的纳米材料之一.但纳米银产品在生产、运输、洗涤、侵蚀、废弃的过程中,不可避免地会被释放到自然环境中.在复杂环境因素影响下,纳米银本身的赋存状态发生转化,并对生态环境构成严重威胁.因此,探究纳米银在环境中的迁移转化过程及其对生态环境的潜在风险成为相关领域的研究热点.针对纳米银研究现状中存在的不足,综述了天然有机质、pH值、溶解氧、离子强度、光照等环境因素对纳米银迁移转化行为以及其对微生物毒性效应的影响,并进一步深入探讨了纳米银的毒理机制,旨在为纳米银的环境行为特征研究以及风险评估提供理论基础.

Anaerobic dye degradation is usually assayed using serum vials, which is time-consuming and costly. In this work, a simple method was established for real-time nondestructive assay of dye biodegradation using 96-well microtiter plates with petrolatum oil to avoid the volatilization and high transmittance transparent tape to prevent the permeation of oxygen. With the anaerobic degradation of methyl red and amaranth by Shewanella oneidensis MR-1, this assay method was verified. Further experiments revealed that blocking Mtr pathway had no substantial effect on the degradation of methyl red and dose of riboflavin also failed to promote the degradation of methyl red. On the contrary, the anaerobic degradation of amaranth depended mainly on the electron transmembrane transfer through Mtr pathway. Our work clearly indicates that Mtr pathway had different effects on intra-and extra-cellular degradation of azo dyes by S. oneidensis MR-1. Such a developed method is helpful for investigating anaerobic dye decolorization.

In the present study, Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 was successfully exploited to produce CuS nanocrystals not only as a biotemplate but also as a supplier of sulfur source. The biogenic H2S produced via the thiosulfate reduction in periplasm grabbed Cu(II) ions bound with extracellular polymeric substance of Shewanella and precipitated as monodisperse CuS nanoparticles extracellularly. These nanoparticles aggregated in the extracellular matrix gradually and then formed CuS nanorods. Ultimately, a complex hollow CuS microshell self-assembled on the cell surface was observed for the first time. The biogenic CuS microshell could significantly enhance the adsorption ability of S. oneidensis MR-1 toward Cr(VI). This work may facilitate a better understanding about the biosynthesis mechanism of nanomaterials and contribute to the application in environmental remediation. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Exoelectrogenic bacteria (EEB) can transfer electrons to extracellular electron acceptors and have wide applications in environmental bioremediation and bioenergy generation. Thus, methods for effectively probing the exoelectrogenic ability of EEB are highly desirable. In this work, a simple but efficient photometric assay based on the extracellular reduction of high polar dyes was developed to evaluate the microbial exoelectrogenic ability. Methyl orange were proven to be used as a probe for evaluating the exoelectrogenic ability of EEB. Through monitoring the extracellular dye decolorization under anaerobic conditions, this plate-based photometric assay could rapidly measure the exoelectrogenic ability of various EEB. This approach was also able to evaluate the exoelectrogenic capacity of Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 wild-type strain and its Mtr mutants. Furthermore, the exoelectrogenic ability of mixed cultures in microbial fuel cells was correlated with the extracellular dye decolorization. Thus, this work is useful for the practical implementation of microbial exoelectrogenic ability evaluation.