• Molecules and Cells
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• 제27권4호
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• pp.467-473
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• 2009

Our previous study suggested that OsBWMK1, a gene which encodes a member of the rice MAP kinase family, generates transcript variants which show distinct expression patterns in response to environmental stresses. The transcript variants are generated by alternative splicing and by use of alternative promoters. To test whether the two alternative promoters, pOsBWMK1L (promoter for the OsBWMK1L splice variant) and pOsBWMK1S (promoter for the OsBWMK1S splice variant), are biologically functional, we analyzed transgenic plants expressing GUS fusion constructs for each promoter. Both pOsBWMK1L and pOsBWMK1S are biologically active, although the activity of pOsBWMK1S is lower than that of pOsBWMK1L. Histochemical analysis revealed that pOsBWMK1L is constitutively active in most tissues at various developmental stages in rice and Arabidopsis, whereas pOsBWMK1S activity is spatially and temporally restricted. Furthermore, the expression of pOsBWMK1S::GUS was upregulated in response to hydrogen peroxide, a plant defense signaling molecule, in both plant species. These results suggest that the differential expression of OsBWMK1 splice variants is the result of alternative promoter usage and, moreover, that the mechanisms controlling OsBWMK1 gene expression are conserved in both monocot and dicot plants.

• Asian Journal of Atmospheric Environment
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• 제8권1호
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• pp.59-68
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• 2014

The Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011 had an extensive impact on the national electricity plans. This paper outlines alternative electricity scenarios that meet the goals of nuclear phase-out and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction. This paper also analyzes the results of each scenario in respect to the electricity mix, GHG emissions, costs and employment effects. The Long-range Energy Alternatives Planning system (LEAP) model was used to simulate the annual electricity demand and supply system from 2011 to 2030. The reference year was 2009. Scenarios are reference (where existing plans are continued), A1, A2, B1, B2, and C2 (where the levels of demand management and nuclear phase-out are different). The share of renewable energy in the electricity mix in 2030 for each scenario will be increased from about 1% in 2009 to 8% in the reference scenario and from 11% to 31% in five alternative scenarios. Total cumulative cost increases up to 14% more than the reference scenario by replacing nuclear power plants with renewable energy in alternative scenarios could be affordable. Deploying enough renewable energy to meet such targets requires a roadmap for electricity price realization, expansion of research, development and deployment for renewable energy technologies, establishment of an organization dedicated to renewable energy, and ambitious targets for renewable energy.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• 제37권3호
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• pp.262-268
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• 2010

Antibodies are powerful and versatile tools to play a critical role in the diagnosis and treatment of many diseases. Their application has been enhanced significantly with the advanced recombinant DNA and heterologonous expression technologies, allowing to produce immunotherapeutic proteins with improved biofunctional properties. However, with currently available technologies, mammalian cell-based therapeutic antibody production, as an alternative for production in humans and animals, is often not plentiful for passive immunotherapeutics in treatment of many diseases. Recently, plant expression systems for therapeutic antibodies have become well-established. Thus, plants have been considered to provide an attractive alternative production system for therapeutic antibodies, as plants have several advantages such as the lack of human pathogens, and low cost of upstream production and flexible scale-up of highly valuable recombinant glycoproteins. Recent advances in modification of posttranslational processing for human-like glycosylation in transgenic plants will make it possible that plant can become a suitable protein expression system over the animal cellbased current production system. This review will discuss recent advances in plant expression technology and issues for their application to therapeutic antibody production.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• 제18권2호
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• pp.296-300
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• 2005

Human-induced soil salinity is becoming a major threat to agriculture across the world. This salinisation occurs in both irrigated and rain-fed agricultural zones with the highest proportions in the arid and semi-arid environments. Livestock can play an important role in the management and rehabilitation of this land. There are a range of plants that grow in saline soils and these have been used as animal feed. In many situations, animal production has been poor as a result of low edible biomass production, low nutritive value, depressed appetite, or a reduction in efficiency of energy use. Feeding systems are proposed that maximise the feeding value of plants growing on saline land and integrate their use with other feed resources available within mixed livestock and crop farming systems. Salt-tolerant pastures, particularly the chenopod shrubs, have moderate digestible energy and high crude protein. For this reason they represent a good supplement for poor quality pastures and crop residues. The use of salt-tolerant pasture systems not only provides feed for livestock but also may act as a bio-drain to lower saline water tables and improve the soil for growth of alternative less salt tolerant plants. In the longer term there are opportunities to identify and select more appropriate plants and animals for saline agriculture.

• 농업과학연구
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• 제36권1호
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• pp.57-61
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• 2009

The invasive pest Brontispa longissima(Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae), native to Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, has extended its distribution to Australia, Asia and Pacific islands and caused serious leaf damages of the coconut palm Cocos nuciferain the invaded regions. Although biological control using parasitic wasps has successfully reduced population density and leaf damage levels, this pest and its natural enemies have not been efficiently producedin conventional methods using young leaves of C. nucifera. In the present study, we examined suitability of plants easily available in Thailand and Japan for mass rearing of this pest to develop effective mass rearing system of this pest. Mature, green leaves of the palms were also suitable for immature development and adult reproduction of this pest. Since mature leaves of C. nucifera are more abundant and less contaminated with fungus than the unopened leaf buds, mature leaves could be a promising plant diet for mass rearing of B. longissima. Ornamental palms such as Hyophorbe lagenicaulis and Washingtonia filifera were also suitable for immature development and reproduction of B. longissima. Away from palms, the cattail Typha spp. can sustain immature development and adult reproduction of B. longissima. In the area where C. nucifera is rare or not available, W. filifera or Typha spp. would be good food plants for mass rearing of this pest.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• 제31권10호
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• pp.1677-1684
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• 2018

Objective: To find biological functions such as antibacterial and antioxidant activities in several tropical plants and to investigate the possibility of antibiotic substitute agents to prevent and treat diseases caused by pathogenic bacteria. Methods: Plants such as Poncirus trifoliata fruit (Makrut), Zingiber officinale Rosc (Khing), Areca catechu L. (Mak), Solanum melongena L. I (Makkhuayao), and Solanum melongena L. II (Makhurapro) were extracted by methanol, n-hexane, chloroform, ethyl acetate, butanol and water. The free radical scavenging activities were measured using 2-diphenyl-2-picryl hydrazyl photometric assay. Antibacterial activities with a minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) were observed by agar diffusion assay against pathogenic strains of Escherichia coli, Burkholderia sp., Haemopilus somnus, Haemopilus parasuis, Clostridium perfringens, and Pantoea agglomerans. Results: Poncirus trifoliata fruit methanol extract showed antibacterial activities against gram-negative and gram-positive pathogens. Additionally, this showed the strongest antibacterial activity against Burkholderia sp. and Haemopilus somnus with MIC $131{\mu}g/mL$, respectively. Areca catechu L. water extract showed antibacterial activities against Burkholderia sp., Haemopilus somnus, and Haemopilus parasuis. The MIC value for Haemopilus parasuis was $105{\mu}g/mL$ in this. Antioxidant activity of Zingiber officinale Rosc n-hexane extract showed 2.23 mg/mL effective concentration 50% ($EC_{50}$) value was the highest activity among tropical plants extracts. Total polyphenol content in Zingiber officinale Rosc methanol extract was $48.4{\mu}g/mL$ and flavonoid content was $22.1{\mu}g/mL$ showed the highest values among tested plants extracts. Conclusion: Taken together, these results suggest that tropical plants used in this study may have a potential benefit as an alternative antibiotics agent through their antibacterial and antioxidant activities.

• Molecules and Cells
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• 제28권2호
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• pp.105-109
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• 2009

We reported previously that overexpression of a salicylic acid (SA) methyltransferase1 gene from rice (OsBSMT1) or a SA glucosyltransferase1 gene from Arabidopsis thaliana (AtSAGT1) leads to increased susceptibility to Pseudomonas syringae due to reduced SA levels. To further examine their roles in the defense responses, we assayed the transcript levels of AtBSMT1 or AtSAGT1 in plants with altered levels of SA and/or other defense components. These data showed that AtSAGT1 expression is regulated partially by SA, or nonexpressor of pathogenesis related protein1, whereas AtBSMT1 expression was induced in SA-deficient mutant plants. In addition, we produced the transgenic Arabidopsis plants with RNAi-mediated inhibition of AtSAGT1 and isolated a null mutant of AtBSMT1, and then analyzed their phenotypes. A T-DNA insertion mutation in the AtBSMT1 resulted in reduced methyl salicylate (MeSA) levels upon P. syringae infection. However, accumulation of SA and glucosyl SA was similar in both the atbsmt1 and wild-type plants, indicating the presence of another SA methyltransferase or an alternative pathway for MeSA production. The AtSAGT1-RNAi line exhibited no altered phenotypes upon pathogen infection, compared to wild-type plants, suggesting that (an)other SA glucosyltransferase(s) in Arabidopsis plants may be important for the pathogenesis of P. syringae.

• 대한약침학회지
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• 제22권3호
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• pp.131-139
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• 2019

Introduction: Mastalgia is the most common benign breast disorder during the fertility period of women. So far a wide range of natural or complementary medicines is used to cure mastalgia. Sanitary organizations need complete and suitable details to help women, for making the proper decision for alternative treatment based on the evidence. The aim of the present study is to introduce medicinal plant-based treatments about mastalgia and summarizes clinical trials about this disorder. Method: The articles were provided using mixture of keywords including cyclic pain, breast, treatment, therapeutics, therapy, clinical trial, herbal, drug, mastalgia and all the probable terms, in national and international databases SID, Iran Medex, Magiran, PubMed, Scopus, Medline, Science direct and Cochrane library, in both Persian and English languages. All cross-sectional and review articles about herbal treatment of mastalgia until 2018 November were studied. Results: Nineteen articles from all of the available articles (45 cases) and a sample size about of (1987 cases) were included in our study. The articles were clinical trials. The results revealed that mastalgia could be healed by Nigella sativa, Vitex agnus-castus, curcumin, Hypericum perforatum, Citrus sinensis, wheat germ, and Ginkgo biloba. Conclusion: Most of the evaluated medicinal plants possessing antioxidant compounds with anti-inflammatory and analgesic properties, exhibited healing effects in the treatment of mastalgia. Thus, medicinal plants can be considered in the treatment of mastalgia; however, further investigations are needed to obtain more details about their probable side effects.

• 대한간호학회지
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• 제31권1호
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• pp.7-19
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• 2001

In our country, patients with diabetes mellitus are searching for complementary treatments to recover from illness, while they received treatments from the doctor. However, have been evaluated or investigated systematically. This study was carried out to explore application of complementary treatments for patients with DM. For this survey, questionnaires were developed by researchers and the data was collected from July to October of 1999. Among the 223 subjects, there is one general hospital, one oriental hospital, 15 area C.H.P, ahd 2 area health centers. The results were as follows: 1. The total number of cases was 223 and the average age was 62.85 years old and average duration of DM was 8.1 years. The number of patients who had experience with alternative therapies was 145 (65%). The number of those who have not undergone treatments was 78 (35%). 2. The 43.5% of experienced CAM were advised family and relatives. Only 30.3% approved the effect of CAM and 52.5% said that If another a new CAM is introduced, they will try it. 4. Ninety three kinds of complementary treatments were used. Among the used items, 63.7% was various types of plants, 21.6% was animal material and 14.7% was the mixed group. As a single item, Bombyx Mori (Silkworm) was the most frequently used (10.5%) followed by the bean, mushroom, Morus bombycis (mulberry), Ginseng, Commelina Communis (Dalgaebi), Chinese medicine, root of Rosa rugosa (Haedangwha). 5. Among the used items, Trichosanthes kirilowii Max. Eucommia ulmoides Oliver, Commelina Communis, Aralia elata, pine needle, mulberry fruit, root of Rosa rugosa. Ginseng, Lycii Fructus, Dioscorea radix, Polygonatum odoratum, Cassia tora L, Bombyx Mori, loach, Crucian carp were based upon the pharmacological function of effect for control of diabetes mellitus symptom. 6. In the analysis of the relationships between the general characters of the patients with new complementary alternative medicine try and hospital treatment; 1) The shorter group suffered from DM (p=.038), poor Self-MBG (p=.037) and wanted to try new complementary alternative medicine. 2) The group of DM education experience were carried out hospital treatment well (p=.045). In conclusion, further study will be required for the patients experience using alternative therapies as the D-M in terms of holistic view of patients.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• 제26권1호
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• pp.160-170
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• 2016

The increasing spread of antibiotic-resistant pathogens has raised the interest in alternative antimicrobial treatments. In our study, the functionally active gram-negative bacterium bacteriophage CP933 endolysin was produced in Nicotiana benthamiana plants by a combination of transient expression and vacuole targeting strategies, and its antimicrobial activity was investigated. Expression of the cp933 gene in E. coli led to growth inhibition and lysis of the host cells or production of trace amounts of CP933. Cytoplasmic expression of the cp933 gene in plants using Potato virus X-based transient expression vectors (pP2C2S and pGR107) resulted in death of the apical portion of experimental plants. To protect plants against the toxic effects of the CP933 protein, the cp933 coding region was fused at its Nterminus to an N-terminal signal peptide from the potato proteinase inhibitor I to direct CP933 to the delta-type vacuoles. Plants producing the CP933 fusion protein did not exhibit the severe toxic effects seen with the unfused protein and the level of expression was 0.16 mg/g of plant tissue. Antimicrobial assays revealed that, in contrast to gram-negative bacterium E. coli (BL21(DE3)), the gram-positive plant pathogenic bacterium Clavibacter michiganensis was more susceptible to the plant-produced CP933, showing 18% growth inhibition. The results of our experiments demonstrate that the combination of transient expression and protein targeting to the delta vacuoles is a promising approach to produce functionally active proteins that exhibit toxicity when expressed in plant cells.