Key Laboratory of Applied Surface and Colloid Chemistry, Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an, 710119, China.
School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Henan Institute of Science and Technology, Eastern HuaLan Avenue, Xinxiang, Henan, 453003, China.
Adv Sci (Weinh). 2022 May;9(13):e2105106. doi: 10.1002/advs.202105106. Epub 2022 Mar 8.
Pesticide overuse is a major global problem and the cause of this problem is noticeable pesticide loss from undesired bouncing of sprayed pesticide droplets and rain erosion. This further becomes a primary source of soil and groundwater pollution. Herein, the authors report a method that can enhance pesticide droplet deposition and adhesion on superhydrophobic plant leave surfaces by amyloid-like aggregation of bovine serum albumin (BSA). Through the reduction of the disulfide bond of BSA by tris(2-carboxyethyl) phosphine hydrochloride (TCEP), the amyloid-like phase transition of BSA is triggered that rapidly affords abundant phase-transitioned BSA (PTB) oligomers to facilitate the invasion of the PTB droplet into the nanostructures on a leaf surface. Such easy penetration is further followed by a robust amyloid-mediated interfacial adhesion of PTB on leaf surface. As a result, after mixing with pesticides, the PTB system exhibits a remarkable pesticide adhesion capacity that is more than 10 times higher than conventional fixation of commercial pesticides. The practical farmland experiments show that the use of PTB aggregation could reduce the use of pesticides by 70-90% while ensuring yield. This work demonstrates that current pesticide dosage in actual agriculture production may be largely reduced by utilizing eco-friendly amyloid-like protein aggregation.
农药过度使用是一个全球性的主要问题，造成这种问题的原因是喷洒的农药雾滴和雨水侵蚀造成的不必要反弹导致农药明显损失。这进一步成为土壤和地下水污染的主要来源。在此，作者报告了一种通过牛血清白蛋白（BSA）的类淀粉样聚集来增强农药雾滴在超疏水植物叶片表面上沉积和附着的方法。通过三(2-羧乙基)膦盐酸盐（TCEP）还原 BSA 的二硫键，触发 BSA 的类淀粉样相变，迅速提供丰富的相变 BSA（PTB）低聚物，以促进 PTB 液滴侵入叶片表面的纳米结构。这种容易的渗透进一步伴随着 PTB 在叶表面上的强淀粉样介导的界面粘附。结果，与杀虫剂混合后，PTB 体系表现出显著的杀虫剂粘附能力，比传统商业杀虫剂的固定能力高 10 倍以上。实际农田实验表明，使用 PTB 聚集可将农药用量减少 70-90%，同时确保产量。这项工作表明，通过利用环保的类淀粉样蛋白聚集，可以大大减少实际农业生产中的农药用量。
