Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) main protease (Mpro) has been regarded as one of the ideal targets for the development of antiviral drugs. The currently used methods for the probing of Mpro activity and the screening of its inhibitors require the use of a double-labeled peptide substrate. In this work, we suggested that the label-free peptide substrate could induce the aggregation of AuNPs through the electrostatic interactions, and the cleavage of the peptide by the Mpro inhibited the aggregation of AuNPs. This fact allowed for the visual analysis of Mpro activity by observing the color change of the AuNPs suspension. Furthermore, the co-assembly of AuNPs and peptide was achieved on the peptide-covered electrode surface. Cleavage of the peptide substrate by the Mpro limited the formation of AuNPs/peptide assembles, thus allowing for the development of a simple and sensitive electrochemical method for Mpro detection in serum samples. The change of the electrochemical signal was easily monitored by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The detection limits of the colorimetric and electrochemical methods are 10 and 0.1 pM, respectively. This work should be valuable for the development of effective antiviral drugs and the design of novel optical and electrical biosensors.

Electrochemical immunosensors have shown great potential in clinical diagnosis, food safety, environmental protection, and other fields. The feasible and innovative combination of enzyme catalysis and other signal-amplified elements has yielded exciting progress in the development of electrochemical immunosensors. Alkaline phosphatase (ALP) is one of the most popularly used enzyme reporters in bioassays. It has been widely utilized to design electrochemical immunosensors owing to its significant advantages (e.g., high catalytic activity, high turnover number, and excellent substrate specificity). In this work, we summarized the achievements of electrochemical immunosensors with ALP as the signal reporter. We mainly focused on detection principles and signal amplification strategies and briefly discussed the challenges regarding how to further improve the performance of ALP-based immunoassays.

To investigate the alternatives to lithium-ion batteries, potassium-ion batteries have attracted considerable interest due to the cost-efficiency of potassium resources and the relatively lower standard redox potential of K⁺/K. Among various alternative anode materials, hard carbon has the advantages of extensive resources, low cost, and environmental protection. In the present study, we synthesize a nitrogen-doping hard-carbon-microsphere (N-SHC) material as an anode for potassium-ion batteries. N-SHC delivers a high reversible capacity of 248 mAh g⁻¹ and a promoted rate performance (93 mAh g⁻¹ at 2 A g⁻¹). Additionally, the nitrogen-doping N-SHC material also exhibits superior cycling long-term stability, where the N-SHC electrode maintains a high reversible capacity at 200 mAh g⁻¹ with a capacity retention of 81% after 600 cycles. DFT calculations assess the change in K ions’ absorption energy and diffusion barriers at different N-doping effects. Compared with an original hard-carbon material, pyridinic-N and pyrrolic-N defects introduced by N-doping display a positive effect on both K ions’ absorption and diffusion.

The double specific nuclease (DSN)-based methods for microRNAs (miRNAs) detection usually require the immobilization of DNA probes on a solid surface. However, such strategies have the drawbacks of low hybridization and cleavage efficiency caused by steric hindrance effect and high salt concentration on the solid surface. Herein, we proposed an immobilization-free method for miRNA detection on the basic of DSN-assisted signal amplification. The biotin- and fluorophore-labeled probes were captured by streptavidin-modified magnetic beads through streptavidin–biotin interactions, thus producing a poor fluorescence signal. Once the DNA probes were hybridized with target miRNA in solution to form DNA-miRNA duplexes, DNA stands in the duplexes would be selectively digested by DSN. The released target miRNA could initiate the next hybridization/cleavage recycling in the homogeneous solution, finally resulting in the release of numerous fluorophore-labeled fragments. The released fluorophores remained in solution and emitted strong fluorescence after treatment by the streptavidin-modified magnetic beads. The immobilization-free method achieved the assays of miRNA-21 with a detection limit down to 0.01 pM. It was employed to evaluate the expression levels of miRNA-21 in different cancer cells with satisfactory results.

In recent years, atomic-doping has been proven to significantly improve the electrochemical performance of biomass-derived carbon materials, which is a promising modification strategy. Among them, there are relatively few reports about O-doping. Here, porous carbon derived from orange peel was prepared by simple carbonization and airflow-annealing processes. Under the coordination of microstructure and surface groups, the derived carbon had excellent electrochemical performance for the K-ion batteries’ anode, including a high reversible specific capacity of 320.8 mAh/g, high rate performance of 134.6 mAh/g at a current density of 2000 mA/g, and a retention rate of 79.5% even after 2000 long-term cycles, which shows great application potential. The K-ion storage mechanisms in different voltage ranges were discussed by using various characterization techniques, that is, the surface adsorbed of K-ionswas in the high-potential slope area, and the intercalation behavior corresponded to the low-potential quasi-plateau area. In addition, the density functional theory calculations further confirmed that O-doping can reduce the adsorption energy barrier of K-ions, change the charge density distribution, and promote the K-ion storage. In particular, the surface Faraday reaction between the C=O group and K-ions plays an important role in improving the electrochemical properties.