• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.53 no.2
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• pp.158-164
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• 2021

Hypertriglyceridemia is the main risk factor for atherosclerosis. It is reported that triglyceride (TG) induces macrophage cell death, and is involved in the formation of plaques and development of atherosclerosis. We previously reported that TG-induced cell death of macrophages is mediated via pannexin-1 activation, which increases the extracellular ATP and subsequent increase in potassium efflux, thereby activating the caspase-2/caspase-1/apoptotic caspases, including the caspase-8 pathway. Contrarily, some studies have reported that caspase-8 is an upstream molecule of caspase-1 and caspase-2 in several cellular processes. Therefore, this study was undertaken to investigate whether caspase-8 influences its upstream molecules in TG-stimulated macrophage cell death. We first confirmed that caspase-8 induces caspase-3 activation and poly ADP-ribose polymerase (PARP) cleavage in TG-treated macrophages. Next, we determined that the inhibition of caspase-8 results in reduced caspase-1 and -2 activity, which are upstream molecules of caspase-8 in TG-induced cell death of macrophages. We also found that ATP treatment restores the caspase-8 inhibitor-induced caspase-2 activity, thereby implying that caspase-8 affects the upstream molecules responsible for increasing the extracellular ATP levels in TG-induced macrophage cell death. Taken together, these findings indicate that caspase-8 potentiates the TG-induced macrophage cell death by activating its upstream molecules.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.59-67
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• 2006

The centrifuge and 1-g shaking table tests were performed simultaneously to compare the dynamic behaviors of loose sands of the same geotechnical properties. The prototype soils were 10 m thick liquefiable loose sands. The geometric scaling factors were 20 for 1-g and 40 for centrifuge tests. The excess pore pressure, surface settlement, and acceleration in the soil were measured at the same locations in the 1-g and centrifuge tests. The total excess pore pressure from development to dissipation was measured. In the centrifuge test, viscous fluid was used as the pore water to eliminate the time scaling difference between dynamic time and dissipation time. In the 1-g tests, the steady state concept was applied to determine the unit weight of the model soil, and two different time scaling factors were applied for the dynamic time and the dissipation time. It is concluded that the 1-g tests can simulate the excess pore pressure of the prototype soil if the permeability of the model soil is small enough to prevent dissipation of excess pore pressure during shaking and the dissipation time scaling factor is properly determined.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.55 no.4
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• pp.235-243
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• 2023

As next-generation sequencing has been developed and used widely, RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) has rapidly emerged as the first choice of tools to validate global transcriptome profiling. With the significant advances in RNA-seq, various types of RNA-seq have evolved in conjunction with the progress in bioinformatic tools. On the other hand, it is difficult to interpret the complex data underlying the biological meaning without a general understanding of the types of RNA-seq and bioinformatic approaches. In this regard, this paper discusses the two main sections of RNA-seq. First, two major variants of RNA-seq are described and compared with the standard RNA-seq. This provides insights into which RNA-seq method is most appropriate for their research. Second, the most widely used RNA-seq data analyses are discussed: (1) exploratory data analysis and (2) pathway enrichment analysis. This paper introduces the most widely used exploratory data analysis for RNA-seq, such as principal component analysis, heatmap, and volcano plot, which can provide the overall trends in the dataset. The pathway enrichment analysis section introduces three generations of pathway enrichment analysis and how they generate enriched pathways with the RNA-seq dataset.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.10-20
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• 2024

RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) is a technique used for providing global patterns of transcriptomes in samples. However, it can only provide the average gene expression across cells and does not address the heterogeneity within the samples. The advances in single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) technology have revolutionized our understanding of heterogeneity and the dynamics of gene expression at the single-cell level. For example, scRNA-seq allows us to identify the cell types in complex tissues, which can provide information regarding the alteration of the cell population by perturbations, such as genetic modification. Since its initial introduction, scRNA-seq has rapidly become popular, leading to the development of a huge number of bioinformatic tools. However, the analysis of the big dataset generated from scRNA-seq requires a general understanding of the preprocessing of the dataset and a variety of analytical techniques. Here, we present an overview of the workflow involved in analyzing the scRNA-seq dataset. First, we describe the preprocessing of the dataset, including quality control, normalization, and dimensionality reduction. Then, we introduce the downstream analysis provided with the most commonly used computational packages. This review aims to provide a workflow guideline for new researchers interested in this field.

• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.35-46
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• 2021

The purpose of this research is to analyze Soon Chul Jung's children's songs, who is one of the four great children's songwriters in Korea along with Geuk Young Yoon, Nan Pa Hong and Tae Jun Park. Soon Chul Jung has contributed by actively participate into children's movement at Japanese colonial period through writing self-composed children's songs. Since children's songs are made for the age group without the sense of sound, children's songs necessitate 'easy to sing-along' melody writing process. Like so, when writing the melody that are easy to be sang along, utilization of development technique using a unit called motive can be the potent way. This method has an advantage of being sang more with ease if actively implemented, and can be done by utilizing the smallest unit of the melody called motive, especially by lightly transform and repeat the unit, consequently structuring the song altogether. To investigate and analyze this motive-based development technique of Soon Chul Jung's songs, 38 out of 40 written songs considered eligible for the research were confirmed and chosen from 'Soon Chul Jung's bibliography and choreography' and each songs were analyzed based on 17 different development techniques which were standardized in the textbook 'Melody in Songwriting' adopted as a textbook of the Berklee college of Music, and also compared these song-writing pipelines with other great songwriters' representatives mentioned above. As a result, it was almost linear that the song's pitch variation in combination with thinning or extension were used frequently and repeatedly, otherwise implicating melody duplication for more than 2 bars and motive repetition were not in his favor, while these methods were often used when writing children's songs. This finding could be viewed as a character of his songwriting.