Plasma activation induced changes in surface chemistry of pigment coating components

Nonthermal Plasma Effects on Fungi: Applications, Fungal Responses, and Future Perspectives

The kingdom of Fungi is rich in species that live in various environments and exhibit different lifestyles. Many are beneficial and indispensable for the environment and industries, but some can threaten plants, animals, and humans as pathogens. Various strategies have been applied to eliminate fungal pathogens by relying on chemical and nonchemical antifungal agents and tools. Nonthermal plasma (NTP) is a potential tool to inactivate pathogenic and food-contaminating fungi and genetically improve fungal strains used in industry as enzyme and metabolite producers. The NTP mode of action is due to many highly reactive species and their interactions with biological molecules. The interaction of the NTP with living cells is believed to be synergistic yet not well understood. This review aims to summarize the current NTP designs, applications, and challenges that involve fungi, as well as provide brief descriptions of underlying mechanisms employed by fungi in interactions with the NTP components.

Strategy to enhance the wettability of bioacive paper-based sensors

This paper reports a potential method that can restore the wettability of bioactive paper-based sensors while maintaining their bioactivity. This study is driven by the need to increase the wettability of the antibody-loaded blood typing paper devices in order to increase the blood typing assaying speed using such paper devices. Plasma treatment is used to improve the wettability of bioactive paper; the protective effect of bovine serum albumin (BSA) to biomolecules against plasma deactivation is investigated. In the first stage, horseradish peroxidase (HRP) was used as a model biomolecule, because of the convenience of its quantifiable colorimetric reaction with a substrate. By using this protection approach, the inactivation of biomolecules on paper during the plasma treatment is significantly slowed down. This approach enables plasma treatment to be used for fabricating paper-based bioactive sensors to achieve strong wettability for rapid penetration of liquid samples or reagents. Finally, we demonstrate the use of plasma treatment to increase the wettability of antibody treated blood typing paper. After the treatment, the blood typing paper becomes highly wettable; it allows much faster penetration of blood samples into the plasma treated testing paper. Antibodies on the paper are still sufficiently active for blood typing and can report patients' blood type accurately.