• Molecules and Cells
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.150-159
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• 2018

Animals use their odorant receptors to receive chemical information from the environment. Insect odorant receptors differ from the G protein-coupled odorant receptors in vertebrates and nematodes, and very little is known about their protein-protein interactions. Here, we introduce a mass spectrometric platform designed for the large-scale analysis of insect odorant receptor protein-protein interactions. Using this platform, we obtained the first Orco interactome from Drosophila melanogaster. From a total of 1,186 identified proteins, we narrowed the interaction candidates to 226, of which only two-thirds have been named. These candidates include the known olfactory proteins Or92a and Obp51a. Around 90% of the proteins having published names likely function inside the cell, and nearly half of these intracellular proteins are associated with the endomembrane system. In a basic loss-of-function electrophysiological screen, we found that the disruption of eight (i.e., Rab5, CG32795, Mpcp, Tom70, Vir-1, CG30427, Eaat1, and CG2781) of 28 randomly selected candidates affects olfactory responses in vivo. Thus, because this Orco interactome includes physiologically meaningful candidates, we anticipate that our platform will help guide further research on the molecular mechanisms of the insect odorant receptor family.

• KSBB Journal
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.51-56
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• 2012

This research was to investigate the polyester preparation using waste ethylene glycol (EG) generated from the wastepaper pretreatment process. Waste EG was obtained from using EG five times repeatedly in the pretreatment of wastepaper. The hydroxyl value of the waste EG was 441 mg KOH/g and its composition was 0.68% cellulose, 6.5% hemicellulose, 6.1% lignin, and 86.7% EG. Maleic acid was used as carboxylic acid. The effect of reaction temperature and time except carboxyl group/hydroxyl group ratio on the crosslinkage of the prepared polyester was marginal. Citric acid, lithium hydroxide and dicumyl peroxide were used as additive or catalyst to enhance the crosslinkage of polyester. Among them, 10% of citric acid was found to be most effective. The crosslinkage was 86% when the polyester was prepared at an optimum condition such as $130^{\circ}C$ and 15 minutes, 1.5 of C/H ratio, and 10% of citric acid, and its insoluble percentage in boiling water for 6 hours was 47%. The weight loss of the prepared polyester was approximately 40% when it was buried in damp soil for 5 months, indicating that it is readily biodegradable. This results can provide some information for future development of wastepaper pretreatment by organic solvent.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.399-405
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• 2012

Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) are widely used nanoparticles and they are mainly used in antibacterial and personal care products. In this study, we evaluated the effect of AgNPs on cell death induction in the murine dendritic cell line DC2.4. DC2.4 cells exposed to AgNPs showed a marked decrease in cell viability and an induction of lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) leakage in a time- and dose-dependent manner. In addition, AgNPs promoted reactive oxygen species (ROS)-dependent apoptosis and AgNP-induced ROS triggered a decrease in mitochondrial membrane potential. The activation of the intracellular signal transduction pathway was also observed in cells cultured with AgNPs. Taken together, our data demonstrate that AgNPs are able to induce a cytotoxic effect in DCs through ROS generation. This study provides important information about the safety of AgNPs that may help in guiding the development of nanotechnology applications.

• Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.297-304
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• 2019

Background: The growing wild boar population has become a social issue and its feeding characteristics could affect the physical condition and the plant species composition in the South Korean forests. We aimed to reveal the preference of the wild boar on forest type and site condition as feeding grounds in two cool-temperate forested national parks, Odaesan and Seoraksan, in order to provide information to manage the growing population. Results: The 75 plots (53.6%) out of 140 plots were used as feeding grounds by the wild boar, implying a considerably large population. Especially, the observation frequency as feeding ground was the highest in Quercus forests (73.3%), and it was significantly more preferred than deciduous forest type (44.2%) and coniferous forest type (32.4%) (${\chi}^2=17.591$, p < 0.001). Significantly more and deeper pits were found in Quercus forests. Moreover, high elevation and gentle slope ridge were relatively preferred regardless of forest distribution. Conclusions: South Korean forests are growing qualitatively and quantitatively. Particularly, Quercus forest area has increased markedly, while coniferous forest area has decreased. Since the Quercus forest provides rich food sources for the wild boar, the enlargement of this forest type is expected to increase the wild boar population. The forests located at high elevations have high species diversity, and it is expected that these forests will be greatly affected by the increase in the wild boar population as preferred feeding grounds.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 2019

Saline soils comprise more than half a billion hectares worldwide. Thus, they warrant attention for their efficient, economical, and environmentally acceptable management. Halophytes are being progressively utilized for human benefits. The halophyte microbiome contributes significantly to plant performance and can provide information regarding complex ecological processes involved in the osmoregulation of halophytes. Microbial communities associated with the rhizosphere, phyllosphere, and endosphere of halophytes play an important role in plant health and productivity. Members of the plant microbiome belonging to domains Archaea, Bacteria, and kingdom Fungi are involved in the osmoregulation of halophytes. Halophilic microorganisms principally use compatible solutes, such as glycine, betaine, proline, trehalose, ectoine, and glutamic acid, to survive under salinity stress conditions. Plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) enhance plant growth and help to elucidate tolerance to salinity. Detailed studies of the metabolic pathways of plants have shown that plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria contribute to plant tolerance by affecting the signaling network of plants. Phytohormones (indole-3-acetic acid and cytokinin), 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid deaminase biosynthesis, exopolysaccharides, halocins, and volatile organic compounds function as signaling molecules for plants to elicit salinity stress. This review focuses on the functions of plant microbiome and on understanding how the microorganisms affect halophyte health and growth.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.55 no.1
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• pp.1-9
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• 2022

In the past few decades, great progress has been made on understanding the interaction between nutrition and health status. But despite this wealth of knowledge, health problems related to nutrition continue to increase. This leads us to postulate that the continuing trend may result from a lack of consideration for intra-individual biological variation on dietary responses. Precision nutrition utilizes personal information such as age, gender, lifestyle, diet intake, environmental exposure, genetic variants, microbiome, and epigenetics to provide better dietary advices and interventions. Recent technological advances in the artificial intelligence, big data analytics, cloud computing, and machine learning, have made it possible to process data on a scale and in ways that were previously impossible. A big data platform is built by collecting numerous parameters such as meal features, medical metadata, lifestyle variation, genome diversity and microbiome composition. Sophisticated techniques based on machine learning algorithm can be used to integrate and interpret multiple factors and provide dietary guidance at a personalized or stratified level. The development of a suitable machine learning algorithm would make it possible to suggest a personalized diet or functional food based on analysis of intra-individual metabolic variation. This novel precision nutrition might become one of the most exciting and promising approaches of improving health conditions, especially in the context of non-communicable disease prevention.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.24-30
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• 2023

Objectives Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia in older adults, damaging the brain and resulting in impaired memory, thinking, and behavior. The identification of differentially expressed genes and related pathways among affected brain regions can provide more information on the mechanisms of AD. The aim of our study was to identify differentially expressed genes associated with AD and combined biomarkers among them to improve AD risk prediction accuracy. Methods Machine learning methods were used to compare the performance of the identified combined biomarkers. In this study, three publicly available gene expression datasets from the hippocampal brain region were used. Results We detected 31 significant common genes from two different microarray datasets using the limma package. Some of them belonged to 11 biological pathways. Combined biomarkers were identified in two microarray datasets and were evaluated in a different dataset. The performance of the predictive models using the combined biomarkers was superior to those of models using a single gene. When two genes were combined, the most predictive gene set in the evaluation dataset was ATR and PRKCB when linear discriminant analysis was applied. Conclusions Combined biomarkers showed good performance in predicting the risk of AD. The constructed predictive nomogram using combined biomarkers could easily be used by clinicians to identify high-risk individuals so that more efficient trials could be designed to reduce the incidence of AD.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.235-247
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• 2024

A total of 64 individuals of Acanthogobius flavimanus, which inhabit the coast of Korea, were collected from 8 regions from July to August 2023. A haplotype network and a phylogenetic tree were created. The genomic DNA of the target fish species was compared and analyzed with the genomic DNA of four regions in Japan downloaded from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). In the haplotype network of Acanthogoboius flavimanus, Eocheong-do (EC) and Goseong (MAJ) exhibited low genetic similarity with other regions in Korea and Japan. The Phylogenetic tree showed that the population of MAJ exhibited differences in genetic structure compared to populations in other regions of Korea and Japan, indicating a distant relationship. Most marine organisms are known to migrate and spread via ocean currents, which is the most crucial factor promoting gene flow through larvae between populations. The haplotype of Acanthogobius flavimanus in MAJ differs from the haplotypes in Korea and Japan. The population in MAJ is believed to have limited genetic exchange due to the North Korea Cold Currents. We identified haplotype patterns based on the geographical distribution of Acanthogobius flavimanus off the coast of Korea and inferred that ocean currents have some influence on genetic distances.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.18 no.11
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• pp.1507-1512
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• 2008

In spite of long research period for Salmonella typhi, little information is known about the pathogenesis mechanism of human typhoid fever caused by S. typhi due to lack of infection model in animals. A wild-type of S. typhi Ty2 strain requires cysteine to grow on minimal media. We hypothesized that this cysteine requirement may restrict colonization of S. typhi in animals during infection process. Among the S. typhi strains carrying Salmonella typhimurium genomic library, we have isolated three S. typhi transformants growing on minimal media without cysteine. Although there were three ORFs in DNA of pBP71, the STM1490 ORF complemented cysteine auxotrophy of S. typhi. Analysis of the deduced amino acid sequence of the STM1490 homolog in S. typhi revealed that there are differences in two amino acids. Plasmids containing amino acid substitutions in STM1490 supported S. typhi growth on minimal media without cysteine, indicating irrelevance of these two amino acids to STM1490 function. These results tells us that there are other factors or systems involved in cysteine requirement of S. typhi.

• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.476-486
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• 2009

Major objective of our study was to introduce initial researches of national long-term ecological monitoring studies on Daechung Reservoir, as one of the representative lentic reservoir ecosystems in Korea. For the long-term ecological research (LTER), we conducted preliminary field monitoring during 2008~2009 and analyzed biological parameters such as phytoplankton, zooplankton, and freshwater fish along with chemical water quality and empirical model analysis. According to phytoplankton surveys, major taxa have varied largely depending on seasons and sites sampled. Overall phytoplankton data showed that cyanophyta dominated in the summer period and diatoms dominated in the winter. In zooplankton analysis, 25 species including 20 rotifers, 3 cladocerans and 2 copepods were collected during the survey. The relative abundance of rotifers (86.5%) was always greater than that of cladocerans (6.3%) or copepods (5.1%). There were distinct spatial and inter-annual changes in the abundance of zooplankton in the reservoir, displaying similar patterns in three sites with the exception of S3 during the study. According to fish surveys, 8 families and 39 species were observed during 2008~2009. The most dominant fish was an exotic species of Lepomis macrochirus (23%), indicating an severe influence of exotic species to the ecosystem. TP averaged $17.9\;{\mu}g\;L^{-1}$ ($6{\sim}80\;{\mu}g\;L^{-1}$), which was judged as a mesotrophy, and showed a distinct longitudinal gradients. TN averaged $1.585\;{\mu}g\;L^{-1}$ during the study and judged as hypereutrophic condition. Unlike TP, TN didn't show any large seasonal and spatial variations. Under the circumstances, nitrogen limitation may not happen in this system, indicating that nitrogen control is not effective in the watershed managements. These data generated in the LTER station will provide key information on long-term biological and water quality changes in relation to global warming and some clues for efficient reservoir ecosystem managements.