• Environmental Mutagens and Carcinogens
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.60-65
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• 2005

The human solute carrier, SLC41Al, is a $Mg^{2}+$ transporter that is regulated by extracellular magnesium. Although intracellular magnesium plays a fundamental role in cellular metabolism, little is known about how $Mg^{2}+$ is taken up and controlled by cells. Magnesium plays a fundamental role in cellular metabolism so that its control within the body is critical. Magnesium homeostasis is principally a balance between intestinal absorption of dietary magnesium and renal excretion of urinary magnesium. The kidney, mainly the distal convoluted tubule, controls magnesium reabsorption. Although renal reabsorption is under the influence of many hormones, selective regulation of magnesium transport is due to intrinsic control involving transcriptional processes and synthesis of transport proteins. Using microarray analysis, identification of the genetic elements involved with this transcriptional control has been begun. SLC41A1(GenBank Accession No. AJ514402), comprises 10 putative transmembrane domains, two of which are highly homologous to the integral membrane part of the prokaryote transports $Mg^{2}+$ and other divalent cations $Sr^2+,\;Zn^2+,\;Cu^2+,\;Fe^2+,\;Co^2+,\;Ba^2+,\;and\;Cd^2+,\;but\;not\;Ca^2+,\;Mn^2+,\;and\;Ni^2+.$ Transport of $Mg^{2}+$ by SLC41Al is rheogenic, voltage dependent, and not coupled to Na or Cl. Expressed SLC41Al transports a range of other divalent cations: $Mg^{2+},\;Sr^{2+},\;Zn^{2+},\;Cu^{2+},\;Fe^{2+},\;Co^{2+},\;Ba^{2+},\;and\;Cd^{2+}$. The divalent cations $Ca^{2+},\;Mn^{2+},\;and\;Ni^{2+}$and the trivalent ion $Gd^{3+}$ did not induce currents nor did they inhibit $Mg^{2+}$ transport. The nonselective cation $La^{3+}$ abolishes $Mg^{2+}$ uptake. Computer analysis of the SLC41Al protein structure reveals that it belongs to MgtE protein family & suggested that the human solute carrier, SLC41Al, might be a eukaryotic $Mg^{2+}$ transporter closely related $(60-70\%)$ protein encoded by SLC41A2 is a $Mg^{2}+$ transporter that might be involved in magnesium homeostasis in epithelial cells also transports a range of other divalent cations: $Ba^2,\;Ni^2,\;CO^2,\;Fe^2,\;or\;Mn^2,\;but\;not\;Ca^2,\;Zn^2,\;or\;Cu^{2+}$ that may have related functional properties.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.281-288
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• 2009

Seed germination is the important stage to express many genes for regulation of energy metabolism, starch degradation and cell division from seed dormancy state. For the functional analysis of seed germination mechanisms, we were analyzed the rice cDNA clones (Oryzasativa cultivar Ilpum) obtained from seed imbibition during 48 hours. Total number of 18,101 Expressed Sequence Tags (ESTs) were clustered using SeqMan program. Among them, 8,836 clones were identified as unique clones. We identified the chitinase gene specifically expressed in seed germination and amylase gene involved to starch degradation from the full length cDNA analysis, and several genes were registered to NCBI GeneBank. To analyzed the commonly expressed genes between inmature seed and germinated seed, 25,66 inmature ESTs and 18,101 germinated ESTs were clustered using SeqMan program and identified 2,514 clones as commonly expressed unigene. Among them, alpha-glubulin and alcohol dehydrogenase I were supposed to LEA genes only expressed in the immature and germinated seed stages. For the clustering of orthologous group genes, we further analyzed the 8,836 EST clones from germinating seeds using NCBI clusters of orthologous groups database. Among the clones, 5,076 clones were categorized into information storage and processing, cellular processes and signaling, metabolism and poorly characterized genes, proportioning 783 (14.29%), 1,484 (27%), 1,363 (24.8%) and 1,869 (34%) clones to the previous four categories, respectively.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Environment and Ecology Conference
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.105-126
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• 2003

In Korea most of annual rainfall is concentrated in several episodic heavy rains during the season of summer monsoon and typhoon. Because of uneven rainfall distribution many dams have been constructed in order to secure water supply in dry seasons. The Han River system has the most dams among Korean rivers, and the river is a series of dams now. Reservoirs need different strategy of water quality control from river water. Autochthonous organic matter and phosphorus should be the major target to be controlled in lakes. In this Paper some problems are discussed that makes efforts of water quality improvement ineffective in lakes of Korea, even after the substantial investment to wastewater treatment facilities.1) Phosphorus is the key factor controlling eutrophication of lakes and the reduction ofphosphors should be the major target of water treatment. However, water quality management strategy in Korea is still stream-oriented, and focused on BOD removal from sewage. Phosphorus removal efficiency remains as low as 10-30%, because biological treatment is adopted for both secondary treatment and advanced treatment. The standard for TP concentration of the sewage treatment plant effluent is 6 mgP/l in most of regions, and 2 mg/l in enforced region near metropolitan water intake point. TP in the effluents of sewage treatment plants are usually 1-2 mg/1, and most of plants meet the effluent regulation without a further phosphorus removal process. The generous TP standard for effluents discourages further efforts to improve phosphorus removal efficiency of sewage treatment. Considering that TP standard for the effluent is below 0.1 mg/l in some countries, it should be amended to below 0.1 mg/l in Korea, especially in the watershed of large lakes.2) Urban runoff and combined sewer overflow are not treated, even though their total loading into lakes can be comparable to municipal sewage discharges on dry days. Chemical coagulation and rapid settling might be the solution to urban runoff in regard of intermittent operation on only rainy days.3) Aggregated precipitation in Korea that is concentrated on several episodic heavyrains per year causes a large amount of nonpoint source pollution loading into lakes. It makes the treatment of nonpoint source discharge by methods of other countries of even rain pattern, such as retention pond or artificial wetland, impractical in Korea.4) The application rate of fertilizers in Korea is ten times as high as the average ofOECD countries. The total manure discharge from animal farming is thought to be over the capacity of soil treatment in Korea. Even though large portion of manure is composted for organic fertilizer, a lot of nutrients and organic matter emanates from organic compost. The reduction of application rate and discharge rate of phosphorus from agricultural fields should be encouraged by incentives and regulations.5) There is a lot of vegetable fields with high slopes in the upstream region of the HanRiver. Soil erosion is severe due to high slopes, and fertilizer is discharged in the form of adsorbed phosphorus on clay surface. The reduction of soil erosion in the upland area should be the major preventive policy for eutrophication. Uplands of high slope must be recovered to forest, and eroded gullies should be reformed into grass-buffered natural streams which are wider and resistant to bank erosion.

• KOREAN JOURNAL OF CROP SCIENCE
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• v.55 no.2
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• pp.151-158
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• 2010

Camelina sativa L., known as popular names "gold-of-pleasure" or "false flax" is an alternative oilseed crop that can be grown under different climatic and soil conditions. Up to date, however, the genomic information of Camelina has not been studied in detail. Therefore, a cDNA library was constructed and characterized from young leaves. The constructed cDNA library incorporated of 1334 cDNA clones and the size of the insertion fragments average was 736 base pair. We generated a total of 1269 high-quality expressed sequence tags (ESTs) sequences. The result of cluster analysis of EST sequences showed that the number of unigene was 851. According to subsequent analysis, the 476 (55.9%) unigenes were highly homologous to known function genes and the other 375 (44.1%) unigenes were unknown. Remaining 63 (7.4%) unigenes had no homology with any other peptide in NCBI database, indicating that these seemed to be novel genes expressed in leaves of Camelina. The database-matched ESTs were further classified into 17 categories according to their functional annotation. The most abundant of categories were "protein with binding function or cofactor requirement (27%)", "metabolism (11%)", "subcellular localization (11%)", "cellular transport, transport facilities and transport routes (7%)", "energy (6%)", "regulation of metabolism and protein function (6%)". Our result in this study provides an overview of mRNA expression profile and a basal genetic information of Camelina as an oilseed crop.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.64-73
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• 2020

The government announced a plan for fund support to the enterprises with high possibility of recovery and early restructuring for the enterprises with low recovery by objectifying credit assessment system. Such announcement of government could be extended to restructuring risk of middle standing enterprises with low financial soundness by establishing the basis to prepare prompt restructuring by reinforcing the basis for restructuring through capital market. This research analyzed financial soundness based on the financial evaluation of bank by selecting 10 middle standing construction companies which focused on housing business in 2019, based on such analysis result, it was confirmed that there was a high possibility of restructuring risk. This research determined that there would be a decrease in growth rate of construction industry on the whole in 2020 due to fall of economic growth rate and reinforced real estate regulation, accordingly, there's a big possibility for middle standing construction companies with paid-in capital ratio due to its low possibility of maintenance of stable credit rating. This research established KCSI assessment model by utilizing the material of a reliable research institute in order for middle standing construction companies to evade restructuring risk, and indicated risk ratio differentiated per each item through a working-level expert survey. Such research result could suggest credit risk reduction method to middle standing construction company management staffs, and prepare a basis to evade restructuring risk.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.1-34
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• 2010

We conduct a comprehensive risk analysis of household debt in Korea for the first time using the whole sample credit bureau (CB) data of 2.2 million individual debtors. After analysing debt service capacity profiles of debtor groups classified by the borrower characteristics such as income, age, occupation, credit scoring, and the type of creditor business companies, we investigate the impact of interest rate and income changes on debt service-to-income ratios (DTIs) and default rates of respective debtor groups. Empirical results indicate that debt service burdens are relatively high for low income wage earners, high income self-employed, low income capital and card loan holders, and high income mutual savings loan holders. We also find that debtors from multiple financial companies are particularly weak in their debt service capacity. The scenario analysis indicates that financial companies, with the current level of capital buffers, may be able to absorb negative consequences arising from the increase in DTIs and loan default rates if the interest rate and income changes remain modest. However, the negative consequences may fall disproportionately on non-bank financial companies such as capital, credit card, and mutual savings banks, whose debtors' DTIs are already high. We also find that the refinancing risk of household debt is relatively high in Korea as more than half of household mortgage debts are bullet loans. As the DTIs of mortgage loan holders are already high, under the current DTI regulation, mortgage loans may not be readily refinanced especially when the interest rate rises. Disruptions in mortgage loan refinancing may put downward pressure on housing prices, which may in turn magnify refinancing risk under the current loan-to-value (LTV) regulation. Overall our analysis suggests that, for more effective monitoring of household debt risk, it is necessary to combine existing surveillance schemes based on macro aggregate indicators with more comprehensive and detailed risk analyses based on micro individual data.

• The Korean Journal of Financial Management
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.51-84
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• 2008

We investigate the signaling effect of repurchase preceding new equity issue using Korean data. In a short time span, firms announce stock repurchases and equity offerings. The proximity of two events in Korean firms indicates that those are not independent of each other. In this paper, we test the signaling effect of repurchase on equity offerings on the two measures. One is announcement effect, which is measured as CAR(0, +2). The other is the effectiveness which is measured as CAR(0, +30) because the price movement during this window influences on the price of new issues. Previous studies that stock repurchase convey positive signal to equity offerings-Billet and Xue(2004) and Jung(2004)-construct sample without the limit of time interval between two events. This causes the unclear relation between those because of the long time interval. In this study we consider only samples of being within one year each other to reduce this problem and clarify the signal of repurchase on equity offerings. Korean firms are allowed to repurchase own shares with two different method. One is direct repurchase as same as open market repurchase. The other is stock stabilization fund and stock trust fund which trust company or bank buy and sell their shares on the behalf of firms. Generally, the striking different characteristic between direct repurchase and indirect repurchase is following. Direct repurchase is applied by more strict regulation than indirect repurchase. Therefore, the direct repurchase is more informative signal to the equity offering than the indirect repurchase. We construct two sample firms- firms with direct repurchase preceding-equity offerings and indirect repurchase-preceding equity offering, and one control firms-equity offerings only firms-to investigate the announcement effect and the effectiveness of repurchases. Our findings are as follows. Direct repurchase favorably affect the price of new issues favorably. CAR(0, +2) of firms with direct repurchase is not different from that of equity offerings only firms but CAR(0, +30) is higher than that of equity offerings only firms. For firms with indirect repurchase and equity offerings, Both the announcement effect and the effectiveness does not exist. Jung(2004) suggest the possibilities of how indirect stock repurchase can be regarded as one of unfair trading practices on based on the survey results that financial managers of some of KSE listed firms have been asked of their opinion on the likelihood of the stock repurchase being used in unfair trading. This is not objective empirical evidence but opinion of financial managers. To investigate whether firms announce false signal before equity offerings to boost the price of new issues, we calculate the long-run performance following equity offerings. If firms have announced repurchase to boost the price of new issues intentionally, they would undergo the severe underperformance. The empirical results do not show the severer underperformance of both sample firms than equity offerings only firms. The suggestion of false signaling of repurchase preceding equity offerings is not supported by our evidence.