He Wang

Irradiation (IR) can cause intestinal epithelial cell death, damage to crypt stem cells, and mucosal barrier dysfunction, which are the features of radiation-induced intestinal injury (RIII). Our study first discovered a natural small-molecule alkaloid Orychophragine D (OV16) with an obvious radiation protection effect. This study aims to investigate the radiation protection effect of OV16 on RIII and its potential molecular mechanism. The results showed that in vitro OV16 exhibited a significant protective effect on an irradiated human small intestinal epithelial cell-6 (HIEC-6) model. Then, transglutaminase 2 (TGM2), which is the key protein for OV16 to exert its anti-RIII protective effect, was identified as a crucial cellular target of OV16 using drug affinity responsive target stability (DARTS), molecular docking, molecular dynamics simulation, cell thermal shift assay (CETSA), and microscale thermophoresis (MST). Moreover, OV16 can upregulate the expression level of TGM2 in the nucleus of HIEC-6. TGM2 can reduce radiation-induced damage by enhancing the proliferation ability and migration ability of HIEC-6 and reducing the generation of γ-H2AX. Collectively, our study first identified TGM2 as a previously unreported therapeutic target for RIII, and provided a future drug design direction for TGM2 allosteric activators using OV16 as a novel molecular template.

The separation of xenon (Xe) and krypton (Kr) is very important for industrial applications and environmental protection. However, the lack of permanent dipoles, low polarizabilities arising from their spherical nature, and similar kinetic diameters make their efficient separation by porous adsorbents exceptionally challenging. This study explored the effects of pore geometry and surface polarity of a series of aluminum-based metal–organic frameworks (CAU-10-H, MIL-160, KMF-1, CAU-23) on Xe/Kr separation performance using a heteroatom engineering strategy. These MOFs are composed of AlO₆ clusters and bent dicarboxylic acid linkers, enabling us to systematically investigate the effects of pore size and heteroatom types on Xe/Kr separation performance. Among them, MIL-160 has a polar linker based on furan, showing the best balance performance. At 298 K and 1.0 bar, the uptake of Xe is 4.12 mmol g⁻¹ and the IAST selectivity is 7.63 for a Xe/Kr (20/80) mixture. The practical performance was verified by dynamic breakthrough experiments, which yielded a long Xe breakthrough time of 42.9 min g⁻¹. Grand Canonical Monte Carlo (GCMC) simulations and first-principles density functional theory (DFT) calculations revealed that the enhanced performance originates from cooperative confinement and polarization effects, with the furanyl oxygen atoms providing optimal Xe-binding sites. This work clarifies the structure–property relationships governing Xe/Kr separation in aluminum-based MOFs (Al-MOFs), highlighting the potential of heteroatom engineering for designing efficient noble gas adsorbents.