• Journal of Advanced Information Technology and Convergence
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.103-113
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• 2019

Motivation: Polymerized actin-based cytoskeletal structures are crucial in shape, dynamics, and resilience of a cell. For example, dynamical actin-containing ruffles are located at leading edges of cells and have a significant impact on cell motility. Other filamentous actin (F-actin) bundles, called stress fibers, are essential in cell attachment and detachment. For this reason, their mechanistic understanding provides crucial information to solve practical problems related to cell interactions with materials in tissue engineering. Detecting and counting actin-based structures in a cellular ensemble is a fundamental first step. In this research, we suggest a new method to characterize F-actin wrapping fibers from confocal fluorescence image stacks. As fluorescently labeled F-actin often envelope the fibers, we first propose to segment these fibers by diminishing an energy based on maximum flow and minimum cut algorithm. The actual actin is detected through the use of bilateral filtering followed by a thresholding step. Later, concave actin bundles are detected through a graph-based procedure that actually determines if the considered actin filament is enclosing the fiber.

• Journal of Applied Biological Chemistry
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.101-107
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• 2011

Aging in females is associated with a reduced metabolic function, increased incidence of neurodegenerative diseases, and cognitive dysfunction, as a result of loss in gonadal function. The change can alter the states of phosphorylation on the proteins, which cause dramatic changes in the cellular location or activity of the proteins. In this study, the differential phosphorylation of the proteins responsible for the functions related to cognition was studied using the ovariectomized adult rats. Phosphoproteomic analysis using the cerebral and hippocampal tissues could identify 51 differentially phosphorylated proteins including 12 proteins for energy metabolism, 8 cytoskeletal proteins, 6 signaling proteins, and other functional proteins in the ovariectomized rats. Further, anti-oxidative enzymes, superoxide dismutase and peroxiredoxin-2, which are known to be inactivated by phosphorylation, were found to be differentially phosphorylated in the cerebellum and hippocampus of the ovariectomized rats, respectively. Many of the deactivated proteins by differential phosphorylation identified in this study were overlapped to those of Alzheimer's disease cases. These results will provide information for neurodegenerative learning and memory impairments in women as brought about by menopause.

• Reproductive and Developmental Biology
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.39-47
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• 2012

Ovarian cancer is the most lethal gynecological malignancy, and specific biomarkers are important needed to improve diagnosis, prognosis, and to forecast and monitor treatment efficiency. There are a lot of pathological factors, including reactive oxygen species (ROS), involved in the process of cancer initiation and progression. The oxidative modification of proteins by ROS is implicated in the etiology or progression of disorders and diseases. In this study, a labeling experiment with the thiol-modifying reagent biotinylated iodoacetamide (BIAM) revealed that a variety of proteins were differentially oxidized between normal and tumor tissues of ovarian cancer patients. To identify cysteine oxidation-sensitive proteins in ovarian cancer patients, we performed comparative analysis by nano-UPLC-$MS^E$ shotgun proteomics. We found oxidation-sensitive 22 proteins from 41 peptides containing cysteine oxidation. Using Ingenuity program, these proteins identified were established with canonical network related to cytoskeletal network, cellular organization and maintenance, and metabolism. Among oxidation-sensitive proteins, the modification pattern of Collagen alpha-1(VI) chain (COL6A1) was firstly confirmed between normal and tumor tissues of patients by 2-DE western blotting. This result suggested that COL6A1 might have cysteine oxidative modification in tumor tissue of ovarian cancer patients.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.16-24
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• 2012

Polyamines are essential for cell growth and differentiation; however their precise roles are unclear yet. In the present study, the cytotoxic effect of spermine (spm) on MCF-7 cells was investigated. In the MTT assay of MCF-7 cells treated with spm, cell viability was significantly decreased in a time-and dose-dependent manner. Cell viability measurement was confirmed by trypan blue staining. FACS analysis shows that sub-G1 was increased in a time-and dose-dependent manner too. When the cells were treated with spm, cells started to show morphological changes within 2 hrs. The expression of adhesion proteins (FAK and integrin ${\beta}1$), and cytoskeletal protein (actin) was checked by Western blotting analysis. Integrin ${\beta}1$ levels were slightly decreased, and FAK and actin levels were rapidly decreased with spm treatment. In confocal laser scanning microscopy, the distribution of actin did not change but the expression decreased in a dose-dependent manner with spm treatment. FAK was evenly distributed under the plasma membrane in the untreated control. However, at 10 ${\mu}M$ spm FAK seemed to move toward the cell nucleus. Integrin ${\beta}1$, which was mainly found in the focal point of the plasma membrane in the untreated control, dispersed through the entire plasma membrane in spm treatment. The present results indicate that cytotoxic effects of spm are triggered by the disruption of adhesion proteins and cytoskeletal protein.

• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.313-318
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• 2012

Acanthamoeba is an opportunistic pathogen known to cause granulomatous amoebic encephalitis and amebic keratitis. Acanthamoeba exhibits life cycle consisting of trophozoite and cyst, and the cyst is highly resistant to variable antibiotics and therapeutic agents. To understand the encystation mechanism of Acanthamoeba, the expression profiles of trophozoite and cyst were compared by gene ontology (GO) analysis. Ribosomal proteins and cytoskeletal proteins were highly expressed in trophozoite. In cyst, various protease, and signal transduction - and protein turnover - related proteins were highly expressed. These results correlated with eukaryotic orthologous groups (KOG) assignment and microarray analysis of Acanthamoeba trophozoite and cyst ESTs. The information of differential expression profiles of trophozoite and cyst would provide important clues for research on encystation mechanism of cyst forming protozoa including Acanthamoeba.

• BMB Reports
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.134-142
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• 2018

Organ growth is fundamental to animal development. One of major mechanisms for growth control is mediated by the conserved Hippo signaling pathway initially identified in Drosophila. The core of this pathway in Drosophila consists of a cascade of protein kinases Hippo and Warts that negatively regulate transcriptional coactivator Yorkie (Yki). Activation of Yki promotes cell survival and proliferation to induce organ growth. A key issue in Hippo signaling is to understand how core kinase cascade is activated. Activation of Hippo kinase cascade is regulated in the upstream by at least two transmembrane proteins Crumbs and Fat that act in parallel. These membrane proteins interact with additional factors such as FERM-domain proteins Expanded and Merlin to modulate subcellular localization and function of the Hippo kinase cascade. Hippo signaling is also influenced by cytoskeletal networks and cell tension in epithelia of developing organs. These upstream events in the regulation of Hippo signaling are only partially understood. This review focuses on our current understanding of some upstream processes involved in Hippo signaling in developing Drosophila organs.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.151-160
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• 2001

Randomly selected 435 clones from Acanthamoeba healyi cDNA library were sequenced and a total of 387 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) had been generated. Based on the results of BLAST search, 130 clones (34.4%) were identified as the genes enconding surface Proteins , enzymes for DNA, energy Production or other metabolism, kinases and phosphatases, protease, proteins for signal transduction, structural and cytoskeletal proteins, cell cycle related proteins, transcription factors, transcription and translational machineries, and transporter proteins. Most of the genes (88.5%) are newly identified in the genus Acanthamoeba. Although 15 clones matched the genes of Acanthamoeba located in the public databases, twelve clones were actin gene which was the most frequently expressed gene in this study. These ESTs of Acanthamoeba would give valuable information to study the organism as a model system for biological investigations such as cytoskeleton or cell movement, signal transduction, transcriptional and translational regulations. These results would also provide clues to elucidate factors for pathogenesis in human granulomatous amoebic encephalitis or keratitis by Acanthamoeba.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.778-783
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• 2008

Anthrax is an infectious disease caused by toxigenic strains of the Gram-positive bacterium Bacillus anthracis. To identify the mitochondrial proteins that are expressed differently in murine macrophages infected with spores of B. anthracis Sterne, proteomic and MALDI-TOF/MS analyses of uninfected and infected macrophages were conducted. As a result, 13 mitochondrial proteins with different expression patterns were discovered in the infected murine macrophages, and some were identified as ATP5b, NIAP-5, ras-related GTP binding protein B isoform CRAa, along with several unnamed proteins. Among these proteins, ATP5b is related to energy production and cytoskeletal rearrangement, whereas NIAP-5 causes apoptosis of host cells due to binding with caspase-9. Therefore, this paper focused on ATP5b, which was found to be down regulated following infection. The downregulated ATP5b also reduced ATP production in the murine macrophages infected with B. anthracis spores. Consequently, this study represents the first mitochondrial proteome analysis of infected macrophages.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.215-224
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• 1996

actin and some actin binding proteins such as tropomyosin, α-actinin and troponin T were localized by simultaneous double immunogold labeling in several developmental stages of Cryptosporidium parvum. All of the observed developmental stages have many paricles of tropomyosin and actin around pellicle and cytoplasm. Tropomyosin was labeled much more than the actin when these two proteins were labeled simultaneously. And α-actinin was labeled mostly in the pellicle, but troponin T labeling weas very rarely observed. From this study it was suggested that tropomyosin seemed to be one of the major proteins of C. parvum, so it must be playing important roles in C. parvum.

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.36-43
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• 2006

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are promising candidates for cell therapy and tissue engineering, but their application has been impeded by lack of knowledge of their core biological properties. In order to identify MSC-specific proteins, the hydrophobic protein fraction was individually prepared from two different umbilical cord blood (UCB)-derived MSC populations; these were then subjected to two-dimensional (2D) gel electrophoresis and peptide mass fingerprinting matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI)-time of flight (TOF)-mass spectrometry (MS). Although the 2D gel patterns differed somewhat between the two samples, computer-assisted image analysis identified shared protein spots. 35 spots were reliably identified corresponding to 32 different proteins, many of which were chaperones. Based on their primary sub-cellular locations the proteins could be grouped into 6 categories: extracellular, cell surface, endoplasmic reticular, mitochondrial, cytoplasmic and cytoskeletal proteins. This map of the water-insoluble proteome may provide valuable insights into the biology of the cell surface and other compartments of human MSCs.