• Journal of Life Science
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.561-565
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• 2009

Human Tissue factor is an essential enzyme activator that forms a catalytic complex with factor VII/ VIIa, and catalyzes both the extrinsic and intrinsic blood coagulation cascades. The extracellular domain of human tissue factor is responsible for association with the biological partner. The efficient procedures for preparing biologically active human tissue factor are essential for the preclinical and clinical studies with coaguligands. An expression vector in Escherichia coli has been constructed to direct the production of extracellular human tissue factor without a fusion protein or a $His_6$ at the N-terminus. The recombinant human tissue factor was expressed in large amounts as a non-native state in E. coli. The recombinant protein was simply renatured during the DEAE-sephacel chromatographic purification procedure. Our expression and purification system does not require a protease treatment or an additional chromatographic step to remove a fusion contaminant, which provides a very useful alternative to conventional expression systems for the production of human tissue factor.

• Korean Journal of Ecology and Environment
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• v.37 no.1 s.106
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• pp.106-111
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• 2004

Fecal coliform bacteria is one of the most common cause of water quality impairments in Virginia, USA. Instream concentrations of fecal coliform (FC) bacteria were routinely monitored to assess surface water quality of the Polecat Creek watershed. Median concentration in water samples collected from 1995 to 2000 ranged from 80 cfu/100 mL to t 70 cfu/100 mL, while geometric mean concentrations ranged from 81 cfu/100 mL to 141 cfu/100 mL. The dilution and deposition by Lake Caroline may cause to lower FC concentration at monitoring site QPB, as compared FC concentration at QPD. Higher in-stream FC concentration occurred during the summer period(June-August), and lower concentration typically occurred during the winter period (December-February). This is due to more cattle in streams, and greater survival and regrowth of FC bacteria under warmer condition. The findings of this study can be helpful in planning the water quality monitoring program to avoid the inaccurate assessment of water quality due to the timing of sample collection.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2015

This study aims to design a monolayer cell adsorption apparatus that would help to produce high-quality slides for Liquid-Based Cytology (LBC) of an early cancer diagnosis for human bodies. The LBC collects exfoliated cells of human bodies and spreads the cells on the slides. Through processes of dyeing and cytological examination, the LBC screens for cancers in early stage. In this study, both of a cell suction module and a cell adsorption module, which are the key elements of the monolayer cell adsorption apparatus, were developed, and using those modules, the study set, first, conditions to help both GYN and NON-GYN apply principal cells without de-endothelialization before conducting its own analysis on the utility. As a results, for GYN, apparatus was determined to be able to produce high-quality slides under the condition of 4 and for NON-GYN, the apparatus would come up with other slides of high-quality under the condition of 2. The study carried out a repetitive test on selected conditions and proved 96% of the repetitive success rate. By the results of what has been learned so far, the study presents that the apparatus has a possibility to replace device from South Korea as one of those other currently-applied systems to run the LBC and that the system will also present a new paradigm for cancer diagnosis as it makes a contribution to the improvement in the LBC.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.16-21
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• 2015

Indocyanine green(ICG) and 5-aminolevulinic acid(5-ALA) have been widely used to mark blood vessels or tumors. However, fluorescent dye detection systems were designed to use one type of dyes only. In this study, we proposed a detection system capable of detecting Indocyanine green and 5-aminolevulinic acid. Multiple filters and light sources are integrated into a single system. In this study, we performed analysis of fluorescent dyes and configured a detection system. During the analysis, it was found that Indocyanine green and 5-aminolevulinic acid have the maximum intensity at $40{\mu}M$. We designed light source for fluorescent dyes and conducted compatibility test using a commercial surgical microscope. The fluorescent dye detection system was configured based on the experimental results. The developed system successfully detects Indocyanine green and 5-aminolevulinic acid. Therefore, more efficient surgical operations can be achieved using both fluorescent dyes at the same time. We expect that the developed system can increase the survival rate of patients.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.2383-2386
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• 2013

Senescence marker protein 30 (SMP30), a hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) associated antigen, was earlier shown by our research group to be highly expressed in HCC paracancerous tissues, but have low levels in HCC tissues. In order to detect anti-SMP30 antibody in serum of HCC patients, we established pET30a-SMP30 and pColdIII-SMP30 expression systems in Escherichia coli. However, the expression product was mainly in the form of inclusion bodies. In this research, we used several combinations of chaperones, four molecular chaperone plasmids with pET30a-SMP30 and five molecular chaperone plasmids with pColdIII-SMP30 to increase the amount of soluble protein. Results showed that co-expression of HIS-SMP30 with pTf16, combined with the addition of osmosis-regulator, and a two-step expression resulted in the highest enhancement of solubility. A total of 175 cases of HCC serum were studied by ELISA to detect anti-SMP30 antibody with recombinant SMP30 protein. Some 22 were positive and x2 two-sided tests all showed P>0.05, although it remained unclear whether there was a relationship between positive cases and clinical diagnostic data.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.652-662
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• 2015

It is necessary to develop small, implantable bio-telemetry systems which can measure and transmit patients' bio-signals from internal body to external receiver. When measuring bio-signals, like electrical bio-signals, acoustic bio-signal measurement has also a big clinical usefulness. But, sound signal has larger frequency bandwidth than any other bio-signals. When considering these issues, a wireless telemetry system which has rapid data transmission rate proportional to wide frequency bandwidth is necessary to be developed. The bluetooth module is used to overcome the data rate limitation caused by the large frequency bandwidth. In this paper, a novel multimedia bluetooth biotelemetry system was developed which consists of transmitter module located in the body and receiver device located outside of the body. The transmitter consists of microphone, bluetooth, and wireless charging device. And the receiver consists of bluetooth and codec system. The sound inside the skin is captured by microphone and sent to receiver by bluetooth while charging. The wireless charging system constantly supplies the electric power to the system. To verify the performance of the developed system, an in vitro experiment has been performed. The results show that the proposed biotelemetry system has ability to acquire the sound signals under the skin.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.15-24
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• 2012

Classification of human thought is an emerging research field that may allow us to understand human brain functions and further develop advanced brain-computer interface (BCI) systems. In the present study, we introduce a new approach to classify various mental states from noninvasive electrophysiological recordings of human brain activity. We utilized the full spatial and spectral information contained in the electroencephalography (EEG) signals recorded while a subject is performing a specific mental task. For this, the EEG data were converted into a 2D spatiospectral pattern map, of which each element was filled with 1, 0, and -1 reflecting the degrees of event-related synchronization (ERS) and event-related desynchronization (ERD). We evaluated the similarity between a current (input) 2D pattern map and the template pattern maps (database), by taking the inner-product of pattern matrices. Then, the current 2D pattern map was assigned to a class that demonstrated the highest similarity value. For the verification of our approach, eight participants took part in the present study; their EEG data were recorded while they performed four different cognitive imagery tasks. Consistent ERS/ERD patterns were observed more frequently between trials in the same class than those in different classes, indicating that these spatiospectral pattern maps could be used to classify different mental states. The classification accuracy was evaluated for each participant from both the proposed approach and a conventional mental state classification method based on the inter-hemispheric spectral power asymmetry, using the leave-one-out cross-validation (LOOCV). An average accuracy of 68.13% (${\pm}9.64%$) was attained for the proposed method; whereas an average accuracy of 57% (${\pm}5.68%$) was attained for the conventional method (significance was assessed by the one-tail paired $t$-test, $p$ < 0.01), showing that the proposed simple classification approach might be one of the promising methods in discriminating various mental states.

• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.8-16
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• 2017

p-Coumaric acid is an organic compound that is a hydroxyl derivative of cinnamic acid. Due to its multiple biological activities p-coumaric acid has been widely studied in biochemical and cellular systems and is also considered as a useful therapeutic candidate for various neuronal diseases. However, the efficacy of p-coumaric acid on zebrafish developmental regulation has not been fully explored. In this study, therefore, we first investigated the action mechanism of the p-coumaric acid on the zebrafish development in a whole-organism model. p-Coumaric acid treated group significantly inhibited the pigmentation of the developing zebrafish embryos compared with control embryos without any severe side effects. In addition, p-coumaric acid down-regulated more effectively in a lower concentration than the well-known zebrafish's melanogenic inhibitor, phenylthiourea. We also compared the molecular docking property of p-coumaric acid with phenylthiourea on the tyrosinase's kojic acid binding site, which is the key enzyme of zebrafish embryo pigmentation. Interestingly, p-coumaric acid interacted with higher numbers of the amino acid residues and exhibited a tight binding affinity to the enzyme than phenylthiourea. Taken all together, these results strongly suggest that p-coumaric acid inhibits the activity of tyrosinase, consequently down-regulating zebrafish embryo pigmentation, and might play an important role in the reduction of dermal pigmentation. Thus, p-coumaric acid can be an effective and non-toxic ingredient for anti-melanogenesis functional materials.

• Food Science of Animal Resources
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.459-465
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• 2015

Bovine milk provides essential nutrients, including immunologically important molecules, as the primary source of nutrition to newborns. Recent studies showed that RNAs from bovine milk contain immune-related microRNAs (miRNA) that regulate various immune systems. To evaluate the biological and immunological activity of miRNAs from milk products, isolation methods need to be established. Six methods for extracting total RNAs from bovine colostrums were adopted to evaluate the isolating efficiency and expression of miRNAs. Total RNA from milk was presented in formulation of small RNAs, rather than ribosomal RNAs. Column-combined phenol isolating methods showed high recovery of total RNAs, especially the commercial columns for biofluid samples, which demonstrated outstanding efficiency for recovering miRNAs. We also evaluated the quantity of five immune-related miRNAs (miR-93, miR-106a, miR-155, miR-181a, miR-451) in milk processed by temperature treatments including low temperature for long time (LTLT, 63℃ for 30 min)-, high temperature for short time (HTST, 75℃ for 15 s)-, and ultra heat treatment (UHT, 120-130℃ for 0.5-4 s). All targeted miRNAs had significantly reduced levels in processed milks compared to colostrum and raw mature milk. Interestingly, the amount of immune-related miRNAs from HTST milk was more resistant than those of LTLT and UHT milks. Our present study examined defined methods of RNA isolation and quantification of immune-specific miRNAs from small volumes of milk for use in further analysis.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.47 no.3
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• pp.213-218
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• 2009

Leishmaniasis is a neglected disease and endemic in developing countries. A lack of adequate and definitive chemotherapeutic agents to fight against this infection has led to the investigation of numerous compounds. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of RT-01, an organotellurane compound presenting biological activities, in 2 experimental systems against Leishmania amazonensis. The in vitro system consisted of promastigotes and amastigotes forms of the parasite, and the in vivo system consisted of L.amazonensis infected BALB/c mice, an extremely susceptible mouse strain. The compound proved to be toxic against promastigotes and amastigotes. The study also showed that treatment with RT-01 produces an effect similar to that treatment with the reference antimonial drug, Glucantime, in L.amazonensis infected mice. The best results were obtained following RT-01 intralesional administration (720 ${\mu}g$/kg/day); mice showed significant delay in the development of cutaneous lesions and decreased numbers of parasites obtained from the lesions. Significant differences in tissue pathology consisted mainly of no expressive accumulation of inflammatory cells and wellpreserved structures in the skin tissue of RT-01-treated mice compared with expressive infiltration of infected cells replacing the skin tissue in lesions of untreated mice. These findings highlight the fact that the apparent potency of organotellurane compounds, together with their relatively simple structure, may represent a new avenue for the development of novel drugs to combat parasitic diseases.