In the past few years Meldrum's acid furfural conjugate (MAFC) have been extensively explored as starting material for the synthesis of photo switchable donor acceptor stenhouse adducts (DASA). Hereby, we have explored the interaction of MAFC with various amino acids. To our surprise, nitrogen rich amino acids like lysine and arginine interact spontaneously with MAFC to give colored adduct immediately, whereas other amino acids, including nitrogen rich histidine, didn't show any coloration. Naked eye detection of lysine in benign solvent make this reagent an attractive new entry to the collection of chemosensors for the colorimetric detection of lysine and arginine. Intense coloration corresponds to the absorption at 514 nm under UV‐Vis spectrometer. Lowest concentration of 100 μ m can be detected with UV‐Vis spectrometer. NMR titrations reveals that the appearance of color is due to ring opening of a furfural that leads to the formation of conjugated triene species. Compared to previously reported chemosensors for lysine and arginine, MAFC offers advantages including simple synthesis, easy handling, high speed, low cost, good sensitivity/selectivity.

Real biological tissues show a great variety of different geometric morphologies with special features on different geometric scales. An interesting example is the liver lobule that is the basic subunit of a liver. The lobule is a quasihexagonal macroscopic structure with periodic like so-called sinusoidal elements with structural features on the micro- and macroscale made of proteins, cells, and fluids. Various tools from micromachining and nanotechnology have demonstrated their capabilities to construct micromorphologies precisely, but even the reconstruction of such a system in technical polymers is challenging. In this work, the rapidly evolving technique of multiphoton polymerization has been explored for the construction of a scaffold that mimics the micromorphology of the liver with high resolution and detail up to the millimeter scale. At the end, a highly complex fluidically perfusable structure was achieved and simulations showed that the occurring shear stress, fluid velocity, and stream lines are comparable to the native liver lobule. Hereby, the photoresists SU-8 and SUEX TDFS were compared in terms of their processability, achievable resolution, and suitability for the intended application. Our results have shown that SUEX needs lower writing velocities but is easier to process and achieves a considerable higher resolution than SU-8. The scaffold could provide a base frame with a geometrically defined morphology for hepatic cells to adhere to, which could act as a starting point for cells to build new liver tissue for further integration in more complex systems.

Bioactive amines are highly relevant for clinical and industrial application to ensure the metabolic status of a biological process. Apart from this, generally, amine identification is a key step in various bioorganic processes ranging from protein chemistry to biomaterial fabrication. However, many amines have a negative impact on the environment and the excess intake of amines can have tremendous adverse health effects. Thus, easy, fast, sensitive, and reliable sensing methods for amine identification are strongly searched for. In the past few years, Meldrum’s acid furfural conjugate (MAFC) has been extensively explored as a starting material for the synthesis of photoswitchable donor–acceptor Stenhouse adducts (DASA). DASA formation hereby results from the rapid reaction of MAFC with primary and secondary amines, which has so far been demonstrated through numerous publications for different applications. The linear form of the MAFC-based DASA exhibits intense pink coloration due to its linear conjugated triene-2-ol conformation, which has inspired researchers to use this easy synthesizable molecule as an optical sensor for primary, secondary, and biogenic amines. Due to its new entry into amine identification, a collection of the literature exclusively on MAFC is demanded. In this mini review, we intend to present the state-of-the-art of MAFC as an optical molecular sensor in hopes to motivate researchers to find even more applications of MAFC-based sensors and methods that pave the way to their usage in medicinal applications.

Activated 2-furfural gives intense color formation when reacted with amines, due to a ring opening reaction cascade that furnishes a conjugated molecular system. Unique colorimetric characteristic of this reaction makes it an interesting candidate for developing chemosensors operating in visible range. Among many activated 2-furfural derivatives, Meldrum’s acid furfural conjugate (MAFC) recently gained significant interest as colorimetric chemosensor. MAFC has been explored as selective chemosensor for detecting amines in solution, secondary amines on polymer surfaces and even nitrogen rich amino acids (AA) in aqueous solution. In this work, the pH dependency of MAFC-AA reaction is explored. It was found that proline gives an exceptionally fast colored reaction at pH 11, whereas at other pHs, no naked eye color product formation was observed. The reaction sequence including ring opening reaction upon nucleophilic addition of cyclic amine of proline resulting in a conjugated triene was confirmed by NMR titrations. The highly pH dependent reaction can e.g., potentially be used to detect proline presence in biological samples. An even more intense color formation takes place in the reaction of natural proline derivative 4-hydroxyproline. The detection limit of proline and 4-hydroxyproline with MAFC solution was found to be 11 µM and 6 µM respectively.

Liquid‒liquid phase separation (LLPS) is a phenomenon relevant in the multicomponent settings of many biological processes, including compartmentation, pathological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, and protein assembly. LLPS also plays a key role in spider silk fiber formation. Many spider silk fibers display properties such as elasticity in combination with high mechanical strength, which result in an outstanding toughness exceeding that of steel or Kevlar. A thorough understanding of the natural silk spinning process is thus vital for translation to artificial spinning techniques to achieve biomimetic fibers with properties superior to those of other fibrous materials. This focus review summarizes the milestones of research on spider silk assembly, starting from two initial theories, i.e., the liquid crystal theory and the micelle theory, followed by evidence for the importance of LLPS in this process. Ex vivo studies and experiments utilizing recombinant spider silk proteins have highlighted the importance of LLPS during spider silk assembly. Here, we provide a consolidated view of the previously separate theories as a concerted, transitional concept, and describe practical implications showcasing the importance of this unifying concept for technical silk spinning.