• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• 제22권6호
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• pp.742-753
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• 2012

Copper-containing compounds are introduced into the environment through agricultural chemicals, mining, and metal industries and cause severe detrimental effects on ecosystems. Certain microorganisms exposed to these stressors exhibit molecular mechanisms to maintain intracellular copper homeostasis and avoid toxicity. We have previously reported that the soil bacterial isolate Achromobacter sp. AO22 is multi-heavy metal tolerant and exhibits a mer operon associated with a Tn21 type transposon. The present study reports that AO22 also hosts a unique cop locus encoding copper homeostasis determinants. The putative cop genes were amplified from the strain AO22 using degenerate primers based on reported cop and pco sequences, and a constructed 10,552 base pair contig (GenBank Accession No. GU929214). BLAST analyses of the sequence revealed a unique cop locus of 10 complete open reading frames, designated copSRABGOFCDK, with unusual separation of copCD from copAB. The promoter areas exhibit two putative cop boxes, and copRS appear to be transcribed divergently from other genes. The putative protein CopA may be a copper oxidase involved in export to the periplasm, CopB is likely extracytoplasmic, CopC may be periplasmic, CopD is cytoplasmic/inner membrane, CopF is a P-type ATPase, and CopG, CopO, and CopK are likely copper chaperones. CopA, B, C, and D exhibit several potential copper ligands and CopS and CopR exhibit features of two-component regulatory systems. Sequences flanking indicate the AO22 cop locus may be present within a genomic island. Achromobacter sp. strain AO22 is thus an ideal candidate for understanding copper homeostasis mechanisms and exploiting them for copper biosensor or biosorption systems.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• 제31권10호
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• pp.2813-2818
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• 2010

A novel method was developed for the speciation of chromium in natural water samples based on homogeneous liquid-liquid extraction and determination by flame atomic absorption spectrometry (FAAS). In this method, Cr(III) reacts with a new Schiff's base ligand to form the hydrophobic complex, which is subsequently entrapped in the sediment phase, whereas Cr(VI) remained in aqueous phase. The Cr(VI) assay is based on its reduction to Cr(III) by the addition of sodium sulfite to the sample solution. Thus, separation of Cr(III) and Cr(VI) could be realized. Homogeneous liquid-liquid extraction based on the pH-independent phase-separation process was investigated using a ternary solvent system (water-tetrabutylammonium ion ($TBA^+$)-chloroform) for the preconcentration of chromium. The phase separation phenomenon occurred by an ion-pair formation of TBA and perchlorate ion. Then sedimented phase was separated using a $100\;{\mu}L$ micro-syringe and diluted to 1.0 mL with ethanol. The sample was introduced into the flame by conventional aspiration. After the optimization of complexation and extraction conditions such as pH = 9.5, [ligand] = $1.0{\times}10^{-4}\;M$, [$TBA^+$] = $2.0{\times}10^{-2}\;M$, [$CHCl_3$] = $100.0\;{\mu}L$ and [$ClO_4$] = $2.0{\times}10{-2}\;M$, a preconcentration factor (Va/Vs) of 100 was obtained for only 10 mL of the sample. The relative standard deviation was 2.8% (n = 10). The limit of detection was sufficiently low and lie at ppb level. The proposed method was applied for the extraction and determination of chromium in natural water samples with satisfactory results.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• 제29권1호
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• pp.120-127
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• 2000

Deep-fat frying is a common cooking practice. There has been considerable concern regarding the mutagenic and carcinogenic potential of thermally oxidized oils. Studies on deep-fried foods so far have revealed not much on the mutagenicity of the oils in the foods. Therefore, in the present study, it was attempted to investigate the mutagenicity ofthe thermally oxidized safflower oil. Oil was heated in a home-fryer at a temperature of 180$\pm$3$^{\circ}C$ for 48 hours. Oil samples were taken at 0, 8, 16, 24, 32, 40 and 48 hours of heating, respectively. Each sample was used to study the changes in peroxide value (POV), acid value (AV), iodine value (IV), conjugated dienoic acid (CDA) content, %, and fatty acid composition. Another series of samples were fractionated into non-polar and polar fractions by column chromatography. The mutagenicity of the samples taken from the thermally oxidized oils, as well as the non-polar and polar fractions of the thermally oxidized oils, was investigated with the Ames test. The Ames test was carried out with and without metabolic activation. Bacterial tester strains used in the present study were the histidine auxotrophic strains of Salmonella typhimurium TA100, TA1535 and TA102 were used for the detection of base pair mutations, and TA98 and TA1537 for frame shift mutations. Each series of samples was dissolved in tetraphydrofuran (inhibitor-free) and tested at doses ranging from 0.05 to 5 mg/plate. None of the oil samples taken during the 48 hour oxidation period showed any mugagenic activity. This was the case, even after the activaton with 59 mix. Also, none of the polar and non-polar fractions showed any mutagenic activity on all the strains tested.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• 제27권2A호
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• pp.137-145
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• 2002

In the method of 3D modeling, stereo matching method which obtains three dimensional depth information from the two images is taken from the different view points. In general, it is very essential work for the 3D modeling from 2D stereo images to estimate the exact disparity through fading the conjugate pair of pixel from the left and right image. In this paper to solve the problems of the stereo image disparity estimation, we introduce a novel approach method to improve the exactness and efficiency of the disparity. In the first place, we perform a wavelet transformation of the stereo images and set the reference points in the image by the feature-based matching method. This reference points have very high probability over 95 %. In the base of these reference points we can decide the size of the variable block searching windows for estimating dense disparity of area based method and perform the ordering constraint to prevent mismatching. By doing this, we could estimate the disparity in a short time and solve the occlusion caused by applying the fried-sized windows and probable error caused by repeating patterns.

• Genomics & Informatics
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• 제3권2호
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• pp.61-65
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• 2005

Comparing 231 genes on chimpanzee chromosome 22 with their orthologous on human chromosome 21, we have found that 15 orthologs have indels within their coding sequences. It was rather surprising that significant number of genes have changed by indel, despite the shorter time since their divergence and led us hypothesize that indels and structural changes may represent one of the major mechanism of proteome evolution in the higher primates. Human T-complex protein 10 like (TCP 10L) is a representative having indel within its coding sequence. Gene structure of human TCP10L compared with chimpanzee TCP10L gene showed 16 base pair difference in genomic DNA. As a result of the indel, frame shift mutation occurs in coding sequence (CDS) and human TCP10L express longer polypeptide of 21 amino acid residues than that of chimpanzee. Our prediction found that the indel may affect to dramatic change of secondary protein structure between human and chimpanzee TCP10L. Especially, the structural changes in the C-terminal region of TCP10L protein may affect on the interacting potential to other proteins rather than DNA binding function of the protein. Through these changes, TCP10L might influence gene expression profiles in liver and testis and subsequently influence the physiological changes required in primate evolution.

• Animal cells and systems
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• 제3권1호
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• pp.89-96
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• 1999

Nucleotide sequences of a 501 base-pair (bp) fragment in the mitochondrial cytochrome b (cyt b) gene were analyzed for 12 populations of Rana rugosa from Korea and Japan using a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and direct silver sequencing. Two genetically distinct groups (type-A and type-B) were found in Korea. Type-A was found throughout most of South Korea and type-B was restricted to the mid-southeastern regions (Samchok, Yongdok, Chongsong and Pohang). But in the Tonghae population, both types were found. The level of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequence differences ranged from 0% to .0.8% among six populations of type-A, and 0 to 1.0% among 4 populations of type-B. However, sequence differences between type-A and type-B ranged from 5.4% to 6.6%, Using Kimura's two-parameter distance, the level of genetic sequence divergence between type-A and type-B was 6.7%. The Japanese R. rugosa was clustered very far from the Korean R. rugosa with 14.7%. In the neighbor-joining and UPGMA tree, all Korean samples were grouped, but subdivided into two types in 99% of the bootstrap iteration.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• 제18권11호
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• pp.2613-2620
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• 2014

In this paper, we consider a full duplexing (FD) wireless cellular network where a central base station (BS) works in the FD mode while the downlink (DL) and uplink (UL) users work in the time division duplexing (TDD) mode. Since this FD system induces the inter-user interference from UL user to DL user, the main challenge for maximizing the system performances is user scheduling that makes a pair of DL user and UL user to use the same radio resource simultaneously. We formulate an optimization problem for user pairing to maximize the cell capacity and propose a suboptimal user scheduling algorithm with low complexity. This scheduling algorithm is designed in a way where the DL user with a better signal quality has a higher priority to choose its UL user that causes less interference. Simulation results show that the FD system using the proposed user scheduling algorithm achieves the optimal performance and significantly outperforms the conventional TDD system in terms of the cell capacity.

• Journal of KIISE
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• 제43권1호
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• pp.40-46
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• 2016

Digital road map generation is primarily based on artificial satellite photographing or in-site manual survey work. Therefore, these map generation procedures require a lot of time and a large budget to create and update road maps. Consequently, people have tried to develop automated map generation systems using GPS trajectory data sets obtained by public vehicles. A fundamental problem in this road generation procedure involves the extraction of representative trajectory such as main roads. Extracting a representative trajectory requires the base data set of piecewise line segments(GPS-trajectories), which have close starting and ending points. So, geometrically similar trajectories are selected for clustering before extracting one representative trajectory from among them. This paper proposes a new divide- and-conquer approach by partitioning the whole map region into regular grid sub-spaces. We then try to find similar trajectories by sweeping. Also, we applied the $Fr{\acute{e}}chet$ distance measure to compute the similarity between a pair of trajectories. We conducted experiments using a set of real GPS data with more than 500 vehicle trajectories obtained from Gangnam-gu, Seoul. The experiment shows that our grid partitioning approach is fast and stable and can be used in real applications for vehicle trajectory clustering.

• Korean Journal of Veterinary Service
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• 제28권4호
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• pp.375-385
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• 2005

The present study was conducted to investigate the genetic profile of two prevalent avian pathogens in Korea namely, Newcastle disease virus (NDV) and infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV). Two farms located in Yeongi-gun, Chungnam were selected for this study. The two viruses were isolated from various organs (spleen, trachea, bursa of Fabricius) of deceased chickens that showed clinical symptoms of Newcastle Disease or Infectious bursal disease like swelling and congestion of the F bursa, facial edema, lacrimation, greenish yellow diarrhea as well as pathological signs like airsacculitis, haemorrhages in the intestines and so on. For analysis of NDV and IBDV, a 466 and 435 base pair fragments corresponding to the HN and VP2 regions which are highly conserved among related strains of NDV and IBDV, respectively, were amplified by RT-PCR and analyzed by sequencing. Comparison of the VP2 region showed a $99.3\%$ homology between the Korean IBDV isolate and the BJ836-attenuated vaccine strain. In contrast, the HN region of the Korean NDV isolate only has an 83 to $84\%$ homology with the vaccine strains LaSota, B1 and VGGA. Our findings reveal that the prevalent NDV strain in Korea is genetically different from the vaccine strains and may explain the recent outbreaks of Newcastle disease in the region.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• 제53권5호
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• pp.611-618
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• 2015

This study describes the first record of Globocephalus samoensis (Nematoda: Ancylostomatidae) recovered in wild boars from southwestern regions of Korea. Gastrointestinal tracts of 111 Korean wild boars (Sus scrofa coreanus) hunted from mountains in Suncheon-si, Gwangyang-si, and Boseong-gun between 2009 and 2012 were examined for their visceral helminths. G. samoensis, as identified by morphological characteristics of the head and tail, were recovered from the small intestine of 51 (45.9%) wild boars. Worms were found from 7 of 28 wild boars (25.0%) from Suncheon-si, 40 of 79 (50.6%) from Gwangyang-si, and all 4 (100%) from Boseong-gun. The length of adult females was $7.2{\pm}0.5mm$, and the thickest part of the body measured the average $0.47{\pm}0.03mm$, while those of males were $6.52{\pm}0.19$ and $0.37{\pm}0.02mm$, respectively. The buccal cavity was equipped with a pair of large and bicuspid subventral lancets near the base of the capsule. The average length of spicules of males was $0.45{\pm}0.02mm$. By the present study, G. samoensis is recorded for the first time in southwestern regions of Korea. Additionally, morphological characteristics and identification keys provided in the present study will be helpful in the faunistic and taxonomic studies for strongylid nematodes in both domestic and wild pigs. The infection of G. samoensis apparently did not elicit pathologic lesions, as revealed by macroscopic observation during the autopsy of all wild boars in this study.