KIST develops next-generation materials for integrated solutions to water treatment challenges

Disinfection and highest phosphate recovery environmental protection and resource circulation at the same time

National Research Council of Science & Technology

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A magnetic sea urchin-shaped material (developed by KIST) is placed inside the pipe where wastewater flows in, and magnets are used on the outside of the pipe to induce self-assembly. The arranged urchin-shaped material can also be easily cleaned by adjusting the magnetic field when it is contaminated by suspended solids in the wastewater.

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Credit: Korea Institute of Science and Technology

The water we use every day is purified in wastewater treatment plants and discharged into rivers, and in recent years, the reuse of treated water for domestic and industrial use has been expanding to solve the water shortage problem. The purification process removes various harmful substances, including phosphorus, which causes green algae, and disinfects microorganisms such as total coliform. Phosphorus is an essential component of domestic and industrial waste, including fertilizers, detergents, and animal manure, but when it remains in the water, it causes algae blooms in rivers and lakes.

A research team led by Dr. Jae-Woo Choi and Dr. Kyungjin Cho of the Center for Water Cycle Research at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) has developed a new water treatment material that can recover phosphorus in a short time with high efficiency and disinfect harmful microorganisms at the same time. The developed material has the dual function of effectively inactivating total coliform in water and quickly removing and recovering phosphorus, which causes algae blooms. The recovered phosphorus can be recycled into various industrial materials such as fertilizers, cleaning agents, and detergents, contributing to the realization of a circular economy beyond simple purification.

In particular, the team utilized a "sea urchin-shaped" nanostructure to achieve world-class phosphorus recovery performance. The developed material can recover about 1.1 kilograms of phosphate per kilogram of material in just five minutes, which is extremely fast and efficient compared to existing technologies.

In particular, the technology is designed as an eco-friendly system operable without electricity. By utilizing the magnetic field of an external magnet, the movement of the material can be precisely controlled, reducing energy consumption by more than 99% compared to conventional water treatment technologies. This also reduces carbon emissions and energy costs, making it a promising alternative technology to combat water scarcity and the climate crisis.

The new materials and control technology developed are applicable to a variety of water treatment environments, including sewage treatment plants, water purification plants, livestock and industrial wastewater treatment sites. In particular, it is possible to simultaneously remove algae-causing substances and recover resources at industrial and agricultural sites with high concentrations of nutrients such as phosphorus. The technology also has a disinfection function, which is effective in obtaining safe water resources. It can be installed and operated without additional power or complex facilities, making it easy to utilize in areas lacking energy infrastructure or in rural areas.

In the future, it is expected to be applied to portable water treatment devices, emergency purification systems for natural disasters, and mobile facilities for underdeveloped countries, and it can also be used in various eco-friendly technology-based industries such as smart farms, precision agriculture, and eco-friendly industrial parks, as well as public water and sewage systems.

"This research is significant because it integrates the two processes of phosphorus removal and microbial sterilization into one, which enables us to present a low-energy water treatment solution that can be applied to various water quality environments," said Dr. Jae-Woo Choi of KIST. "This study is significant in that it shows that we can effectively disinfect total coliform without chlorine or electricity, and it can be developed into an energy-saving disinfection technology in the future," said Dr. Kyungjin Cho, another co-corresponding author of the study.

"The key to our research is the rapid recovery of phosphorus from sea urchin structural materials and the implementation of a process that precisely controls particles in water with magnetic fields," said Dr. Youngkyun Jung, first author of the study, adding, "It holds strong potential for future expansion into multifunctional water treatment platforms"

Magnet-based nanomaterial control devices can enhance water treatment capacity thorough scalable modular design by connecting multiple pipes with magnets attached. Nanomaterials fouled by suspended solids can be easily cleaned by a simple process of controlling the magnetic field, allowing for low-energy, long-term operation.

Nanomaterial-controlled water purification device using magnets developed by KIST

Credit

Korea Institute of Science and Technology

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KIST was established in 1966 as the first government-funded research institute in Korea. KIST now strives to solve national and social challenges and secure growth engines through leading and innovative research. For more information, please visit KIST’s website at https://www.kist.re.kr/eng/index.do

This research was supported by the Ministry of Science and ICT (Minister Yoo Sang-im) through the KIST Institutional Program and the Sejong Science Fellowship Program for Outstanding Emerging Research (RS-2023-00209565). The research was published in the latest issue of the international journal Advanced Composites and Hybrid Materials (IF 23.2, JCR field 1.4%).

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Journal

Advanced Composites and Hybrid Materials

DOI

10.1007/s42114-025-01303-3 

Article Title

Electromagnetic-field-sensitive bridges based on urchin-like La/Cu-Fe3O4 nanocapsules for ultra-efficient phosphate recovery and water disinfection

 

New diagnostic tool uses bioluminescence to detect viruses

Mass General Brigham researchers developed LUCAS, a new diagnostic tool that resolves shortcomings of current tools and more accurately identifies SARS-CoV-2, HIV, HBV, and HCV in patient samples

Mass General Brigham

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Mass General Brigham researchers are shining a powerful new light into the viral darkness with the development of Luminescence CAscade-based Sensor (LUCAS), a rapid, portable, highly-sensitive diagnostic tool for processing complex biological samples. Compared to its diagnostic predecessors, LUCAS creates 500-fold stronger and 8-fold longer-lasting bioluminescence signals, overcoming longstanding challenges faced by point-of-care diagnostics. Their study published today in Nature Biomedical Engineering.

“Developing effective diagnostics is incredibly challenging, especially when you think about the size of infectious disease particles and the complicated biological fluids we’re attempting to identify them in. Finding an HIV particle in a human blood sample is like finding an ice cube in a jelly-filled Olympic swimming pool while blindfolded,” said senior author Hadi Shafiee, PhD, a faculty member in the Division of Engineering in Medicine and Renal Division of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system. “With its novel enzyme cascade approach, LUCAS marks a substantial leap forward for sensing viruses in these complex biological samples.”

Point-of-care diagnostics have become essential tools in many households, as people measure their blood sugar, take pregnancy tests, and even conduct their own COVID-19 assays. These diagnostics, which allow people to forgo tedious, expensive laboratory testing, are important for disease detection, treatment, and monitoring. Yet current diagnostics can fall short, with faults like inaccuracy and poor sensitivity. Bioluminescence has the potential to alleviate common shortcomings experienced by other methods, like background noise, false positives, photobleaching and phototoxicity.

Bioluminescence utilizes the same natural enzyme that makes fireflies glow to light up biological samples for imaging. The enzyme, luciferase, is added to a sample to find and flag viral particles. Then, luciferin molecules are introduced to that sample, prompting a luciferase reaction that creates a burst of light. But this reaction produces a light signal that is both weak and short-lived.

Shafiee and team developed a unique enzyme signal cascade to strengthen and prolong bioluminescence signals. They introduce another enzyme to the equation, called beta-galactosidase, that sticks to luciferin and releases it continuously, rather than allowing luciferin to float freely in the sample for one-and-done reactions. This extra step means more luciferin, more luciferase reactions, and more bioluminescence. In fact, this step enabled LUCAS to be 515 times more bioluminescent than non-LUCAS systems, and LUCAS signals maintained 96% strength after an hour.

To evaluate LUCAS’ efficacy, the team used 177 viral-spiked patient samples and 130 viral-spiked serum samples infected with either SARS-CoV-2, HIV, HBV, or HCV. SARS-CoV-2 patient samples were collected via nasopharyngeal swab, while HIV, HBV, and HCV samples were collected via blood draw. LUCAS provided diagnostic answers within 23 minutes and with an average accuracy across all pathogens of over 94%.

The researchers designed LUCAS to be both portable and easy to use so that it can be an option for high- and low-resource point-of-care environments. As a next step, the team will be testing LUCAS’ efficacy in other biological fluids and whether the method can identify more than one pathogen at once. Shafiee also notes that biomarker identification for many diseases, including Alzheimer’s, is a rapidly evolving space—so having a tool like LUCAS ready to go as new biomarkers emerge could prove impactful in years to come.

“We always want to detect infection and disease as early as possible, as that can make all the difference when it comes to care and long-term outcomes,” said first author Sungwan Kim, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in Shafiee’s lab at the Brigham. “With our focus on developing diagnostic tools that are sensitive, accurate, and accessible, we want to make early detection easier than it has ever been and push personalized care into a new era.”

Authorship: In addition to Shafiee and Kim, Mass General Brigham authors include Giwon Cho, Jaebaek Lee, Khushi Doshi, Supriya Gharpure, Jisan Kim, Juyong Gwak, Joseph M. Hardie, Manoj K. Kanakasabapathy, Hemanth Kandula, Prudhvi Thirumalaraju, Younseong Song, Hui Chen, Daniel R. Kuritzkes, Jonathan Z. Li, and Athe M. Tsibris.

Disclosures: Kim and Shafiee have filed a patent on the reported technology through Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Funding: This work was partially supported by the National Institutes of Health under award numbers (R01EB033866, R01AI138800, R01AI138800-05S1, U54HL119145, R33AI140489, and (R61AI140489).

Paper cited: Kim S et al. “Ultrasensitive and long-lasting bioluminescence immunoassay for point-of-care viral antigen detection” Nature Biomedical Engineering DOI: 10.1038/s41551-025-01405-9

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About Mass General Brigham

Mass General Brigham is an integrated academic health care system, uniting great minds to solve the hardest problems in medicine for our communities and the world. Mass General Brigham connects a full continuum of care across a system of academic medical centers, community and specialty hospitals, a health insurance plan, physician networks, community health centers, home care, and long-term care services. Mass General Brigham is a nonprofit organization committed to patient care, research, teaching, and service to the community. In addition, Mass General Brigham is one of the nation’s leading biomedical research organizations with several Harvard Medical School teaching hospitals. For more information, please visit massgeneralbrigham.org.

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Journal

Nature Biomedical Engineering

DOI

10.1038/s41551-025-01405-9 

Article Title

Ultrasensitive and long-lasting bioluminescence immunoassay for point-of-care viral antigen detection

Article Publication Date

30-May-2025

 

New plant leaf aging factor found

Mutant protein protects against mildew, but leaves turn yellow and age sooner

Osaka Metropolitan University

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Wild-type Arabidopsis thaliana, top row, compared to the plant with a mutation.

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Credit: Osaka Metropolitan University

Resistance to disease should mean a longer life, but researchers have found that a mutant protein that helps a plant fight mildew might make it age sooner.

The Osaka Metropolitan University research team of Graduate School of Agriculture student Tomoko Matsumoto and Professor Noriko Inada and Graduate School of Science Professor Koichi Kobayashi discovered that thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana) plants with the mutant Actin Depolymerizing Factor protein turn yellow sooner over time and in dark conditions compared to wild-type thale cress.

“ADFs are involved not only in leaf aging but also in disease response and plant growth control,” Professor Inada explained. “Further elucidation of the function of ADFs can help contribute to crop yield improvement and enhanced sustainability of agricultural production.”

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About OMU

Established in Osaka as one of the largest public universities in Japan, Osaka Metropolitan University is committed to shaping the future of society through the “Convergence of Knowledge” and the promotion of world-class research. For more research news, visit https://www.omu.ac.jp/en/ and follow us on social media: X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn.

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Journal

Plant and Cell Physiology

DOI

10.1093/pcp/pcaf027 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Arabidopsis thaliana ACTIN DEPOLYMERIZING FACTORs play a role in leaf senescence regulation

Article Publication Date

30-May-2025

 

HIV discovery could open door to long-sought cure

University of Virginia Health System

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University of Virginia School of Medicine scientists have uncovered a key reason why HIV remains so difficult to cure: Their research shows that small changes in the virus affect how quickly or slowly it replicates, and how easily or stubbornly it can reawaken from hiding. These insights bring researchers closer to finding ways to flush out the dormant virus and eliminate it for good.

Thanks to remarkable progress in HIV treatment, the virus can often be suppressed to undetectable levels in the blood, eliminating most disease symptoms, and preventing transmission to others. But HIV never truly goes away. Instead, it hides in the body in a dormant, or “latent,” state, and if medications are ever stopped it can reemerge. In this stealth mode, the virus evades both antiretroviral drugs and the immune system, posing one of the biggest challenges to finding a cure.

“HIV treatment is lifesaving but also lifelong,” said Patrick Jackson, MD, one of the two lead authors on the paper. “Understanding how the virus stays latent in cells could help us develop a lasting cure for HIV.”

UVA’s new findings reveal a critical clue to how HIV controls this hiding act. The research shows that subtle variations in a viral control system, known as the Rev-RRE axis, influence how efficiently the virus replicates and how easily it reactivates from latency. Some versions of this system make the virus more aggressive, while others keep it less active and harder to bring out of hiding for elimination. 

“Early on many scientists thought that the Rev-RRE axis was merely an on-off switch for the virus. However, our recent studies have shown that it functions more like a rheostat,” said Marie-Louise Hammarskjold, MD, PhD, associate director of UVA’s Myles H. Thaler Center for AIDS and Human Retrovirus Research in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Cancer Biology.

“We’ve known for some time that the Rev-RRE axis varied in activity,” said David Rekosh, PhD, director of the center. “This study links it directly to how well the virus can replicate and re-activate from latency.”

Understanding HIV

To replicate, HIV must export its RNA – its cellular operating instructions – from the nucleus of infected cells. It does this using a coordinated system involving a viral protein called Rev and a special RNA structure called the Rev Response Element, or RRE. UVA’s new research shows that small changes in this regulatory system directly impact HIV’s ability to replicate and emerge from latency. The study found that viruses with low Rev activity had a disadvantage in both replication and latency reactivation. 

This variability helps explain why HIV persists despite aggressive treatment. To develop a cure, future therapies may need to account for these subtle variations that allow the virus to shift its behavior, the researchers say.

“Rev has often been overlooked in the context of latency, even though it’s essential for HIV replication. Our work helps explain why some current ‘shock and kill’ approaches struggle to fully reactivate the virus,” said Godfrey Dzhivhuho, PhD, the other lead author of the study. “If a portion of the viral reservoir has low Rev-RRE activity, it will be more resistant to reactivation. By enhancing the Rev-RRE axis, we may be able to induce a stronger and more complete latency reversal and bring us closer to strategies that can truly clear the virus.”

Dzhivhuho first met Rekosh and Hammarskjold years ago when they were teaching summer sessions at the University of Venda in South Africa, a country where more than 8 million people live with HIV. He later obtained his PhD in HIV immunology from the University of Cape Town and now devotes his career to better understanding HIV and other infectious diseases as part of UVA’s Thaler Center.

“Coming from South Africa, where HIV affects so many lives, I’ve always wanted to be part of the effort to end this epidemic,” Dzhivhuho said. “I hope this work brings us one step closer to a cure, not just by uncovering how the virus works, but by helping design smarter strategies to finally eliminate it. That’s what drives me every day in this research.”

Findings Published

The researchers have published their findings in the scientific journal PLOS Pathogens. The research team included Godfrey A. Dzhivhuho, Patrick E.H. Jackson, Ethan S. Honeycutt, Flavio da Silva Mesquita, Jing Huang, Marie-Louise Hammarskjold, and David Rekosh. A full list of disclosures is available in the publication.

This work was supported by the Myles H. Thaler Research Support Gift to UVA and by the National Institutes of Health, grants R21 AI134208 and K08 AI136671.

To keep up with the latest medical research news from UVA, subscribe to the Making of Medicine blog at http://makingofmedicine.virginia.edu.

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Journal

PLOS Pathogens

DOI

10.1371/journal.ppat.1012885 

 

How social media influencers impact FOMO in young consumers

‘Fear of missing out’ is negatively linked to well-being

Ohio State UniversityFacebook

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Young consumers who shop online and have FOMO (fear of missing out) tend to feel lower levels of social, psychological and financial well-being, a new study finds – but there’s one important caveat.

 

Researchers found that having a stronger attachment to a social media influencer is linked to younger consumers having improved feelings of well-being in those areas.

 

The findings show a complex dynamic for young people who follow the latest trends in fashion as they shop online and develop one-sided relationships with influencers who they turn to for shopping advice.

 

“Our findings are among the first to show the negative role that FOMO has on young consumers as they look to keep up with what’s fashionable,” said Abbey Bartosiak, who led the research while earning a PhD in consumer sciences at The Ohio State University.

 

“But it also shows that feeling a strong connection to a social media influencer who may help them decide what to buy can be related to their feelings of well-being.”

 

The study was published recently in the journal PLOS One.

 

FOMO is normally seen as a fear of missing out on events and parties that your friends are attending, but this study shows another side of the phenomenon – fear of missing out on the latest fashion trends.

 

“Our study shows that this kind of FOMO is a real thing, and that it is linked to people’s well-being,” said Cäzilia Loibl, co-author of the study and professor and chair of consumer sciences at Ohio State.

 

The study involved a sample of 863 U.S. adults between 18 and 40 years old who participated online. All of them used social media and said they followed a social media influencer.

 

An influencer is someone who has become famous through social media and not through traditional celebrity means, like being a movie star or professional athlete. These influencers often have partnerships with companies to endorse their products or services.

 

This new form of marketing has grown quickly, and the number of firms using influence marketing almost doubled from 4,000 in 2019 to 7,300 in 2021, with Instagram being the preferred channel, according to the Influencer Marketing Hub.

 

Because of the stunning growth of influencer marketing, the researchers wanted to see how it is connected to consumer behavior in terms of FOMO and well-being.

 

“A key reason for the success of social media influencer marketing is that followers feel they connect to the influencer like a friend,” Bartosiak said.

 

In this study, participants completed measures of how much FOMO they experienced and how attached they felt to the influencers they followed. In addition, they rated their experiences of shopping on social media, such as how often they bought items recommended by influencers. Finally, they rated their social, psychological and financial well-being.

 

The researchers expected that people with higher levels of FOMO would feel less well-being in all three areas, judging from findings in other studies, which is exactly what they found.

 

“If you feel that you’re missing out on events or trends that your friends are involved in, it is not surprising that your well-being will be hurt,” Loibl said.

 

But researchers also expected that those who reported stronger attachments to influencers could reverse that trend. That, again, is what they found for the two areas of social and psychological well-being.

 

“This may be one reason why social media influencers are so popular,” Bartosiak said.

 

“If you feel connected to this influencer and her lifestyle, you might feel that the products you buy based on her recommendations make your life better. And that is linked to well-being.”

 

However, there was one surprise for the researchers. They hypothesized that those with stronger attachments to influencers would have a more negative sense of financial well-being. The thought was that people would buy more things on the advice of the influencer – possibly things they didn’t need or couldn’t afford – and that could be linked to higher levels of financial regret.

 

But that’s not what they found. Even financial well-being was higher for those with stronger attachments to social media influencers.

 

The researchers emphasized that they didn’t have objective financial data on participants, and the financial well-being measure was based just on their self-reports.

 

“We don’t know why people felt better about their financial well-being. It is something we are exploring in another study,” Loibl said.

 

Bartosiak said the study findings show why consumers are attracted to social media influencers, but it is still not clear the impact is all positive.

 

“Influencers can provide a sense of connection that benefits consumers in terms of their feelings of well-being, but there are still concerns about overconsumption and what this might do to people in the long run,” she said.

 

“There’s still more to learn about what this is doing to people.”

 

The study was co-authored by Jung Eun Lee, an associate professor of consumer and design sciences at Auburn University.

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Journal

PLOS One

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0319034 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Fear of missing out, social media influencers, and the social, psychological and financial wellbeing of young consumers