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1. Deconvoluting charge-transfer, mass transfer, and ohmic resistances in phosphonic acid–sulfonic acid ionomer binders used in electrochemical hydrogen pumps

   https://doi.org/10.1039/D3EE01776A  

   Arunagiri, Karthik; Wong, Andrew Jark-Wah; Briceno-Mena, Luis; Elsayed, Hania Mohamed; Romagnoli, José A.; Janik, Michael J.; Arges, Christopher G. (January 2023, Energy & Environmental Science)

   This work reveals how electrode binders affect reaction kinetics, ionic conductivity, and gas transport in electrochemical hydrogen pumps (EHPs). Using a blend of phosphonic acid and perfluorosulfonic acid ionomers as the electrode binder, an EHP was operated at 5 A cm⁻². 

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2. Environmentally sustainable lithium-ion battery cathode binders based on cellulose nanocrystals

   https://doi.org/10.1039/D4TA03305A  

   Huang, Xingkang; You, Haoyang; Yan, Xiaoli; Borkiewicz, Olaf J; Wiaderek, Kamila M; Hui, Janan; Hersam, Mark C; Chaudhuri, Santanu; Rowan, Stuart J; Chen, Junhong (December 2024, Journal of Materials Chemistry A)

   Carboxylic acid functionalized cellulose nanocrystals have been obtained from biomass and evaluated as aqueous, environmentally sustainable alternatives to conventional polyvinylidene difluoride binders for cathodes of lithium-ion batteries. 

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3. A defined structural unit enables de novo design of small-molecule–binding proteins

   https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abb8330  

   Polizzi, Nicholas F.; DeGrado, William F. (September 2020, Science)

   The de novo design of proteins that bind highly functionalized small molecules represents a great challenge. To enable computational design of binders, we developed a unit of protein structure—a van der Mer (vdM)—that maps the backbone of each amino acid to statistically preferred positions of interacting chemical groups. Using vdMs, we designed six de novo proteins to bind the drug apixaban; two bound with low and submicromolar affinity. X-ray crystallography and mutagenesis confirmed a structure with a precisely designed cavity that forms favorable interactions in the drug–protein complex. vdMs may enable design of functional proteins for applications in sensing, medicine, and catalysis. 

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4. Linking fresh paste microstructure, rheology and extrusion characteristics of cementitious binders for 3D printing

   https://doi.org/10.1111/jace.16305  

   Nair, Sooraj A. O.; Alghamdi, Hussam; Arora, Aashay; Mehdipour, Iman; Sant, Gaurav; Neithalath, Narayanan (January 2019, Journal of the American Ceramic Society)

   Abstract Cementitious binders amenable to extrusion‐based 3D printing are formulated by tailoring the fresh microstructure through the use of fine limestone powder or a combination of limestone powder and microsilica or metakaolin. Mixtures are proportioned with and without a superplasticizer to enable different particle packings at similar printability levels. A simple microstructural parameter, which implicitly accounts for the solid volume and inverse square dependence of particle size on yield stress can be used to select preliminary material combinations for printable binders. The influence of composition/microstructure on the response of pastes to extension or squeezing are also brought out. Extrusion rheology is used in conjunction with a phenomenological model to better understand the properties of significance in extrusion‐based printing of cementitious materials. The extrusion yield stress and die wall slip shear stress extracted from the model enables an understanding of their relationships with the fresh paste microstructure, which are crucial in selecting binders, extrusion geometry, and processing parameters for 3D printing. 

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5. The Role of Hydrophobicity in Peptide-MHC Binding

   https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91241-3_3  

   Arnav Solanki, Marc Riedel (October 2021, Lecture notes in computer science)

   George Bebis, Terry Gaasterland (Ed.)

   Major Histocompability Complex (MHC) Class I molecules provide a pathway for cells to present endogenous peptides to the immune system, allowing it to distinguish healthy cells from those infected by pathogens. Software tools based on neural networks such as NetMHC and NetMHCpan predict whether peptides will bind to variants of MHC molecules. These tools are trained with experimental data, consisting of the amino acid sequence of peptides and their observed binding strength. Such tools generally do not explicitly consider hydrophobicity, a significant biochemical factor relevant to peptide binding. It was observed that these tools predict that some highly hydrophobic peptides will be strong binders, which biochemical factors suggest is incorrect. This paper investigates the correlation of the hydrophobicity of 9-mer peptides with their predicted binding strength to the MHC variant HLA-A*0201 for these software tools. Two studies were performed, one using the data that the neural networks were trained on and the other using a sample of the human proteome. A significant bias within NetMHC-4.0 towards predicting highly hydrophobic peptides as strong binders was observed in both studies. This suggests that hydrophobicity should be included in the training data of the neural networks. Retraining the neural networks with such biochemical annotations of hydrophobicity could increase the accuracy of their predictions, increasing their impact in applications such as vaccine design and neoantigen identification. 

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