• IMMUNE NETWORK
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.5.1-5.22
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• 2022

The approval of immunotherapies such as checkpoint inhibitors (CPIs), adoptive cell therapies and cancer vaccines has revolutionized the way cancer treatment is approached. While immunotherapies have improved clinical outcome in a variety of tumor types, some cancers have proven harder to combat using single agents, underscoring the need for multi-targeted immunotherapy approaches. Efficacy of CPIs and cancer vaccines requires patients to have a competent immune system with adequate cell numbers while the efficacy of adoptive cellular therapy is limited by the expansion and persistence of cells after infusion. A promising strategy to overcome these challenges is combination treatment with common gamma-chain cytokines. Gamma-chain cytokines play a critical role in the survival, proliferation, differentiation and function of multiple immune cell types, including CD8 T-cells and NK cells, which are at the center of the anti-tumor response. While the short halflife of recombinant cytokines initially limited their application in the clinic, advancements in protein engineering have led to the development of several next-generation drug candidates with dramatically increased half-life and bioactivity. When combining these cytokines with other immunotherapies, strong evidence of synergy has been observed in preclinical and clinical cancer settings. This promising data has led to the initiation of 70 ongoing clinical trials including IL-2, IL-7, IL-15 and IL-21. This review summarizes the recent advancements of common gamma-chain cytokines and their potential as a cancer immunotherapy.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.265-274
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• 2008

Glutathione S-transferases (GSTs) are multifunctional proteins encoded by a large gene family divided into Phi, Tau, Theta, Zeta, Lambda and DHAR classes on the basis of sequence identity. The Phi(F) and Tau(U) classes are plant-specific and ubiquitous. Their roles have been defined as herbicide detoxification and responses to biotic and abiotic stresses. Fifty-two members of the GST super-family were identified in the Arabidopsis thaliana genome, 13 members of which belong to the Phi class of GSTs (AtGSTFs). Based on the sequence similarities of AtGSTFs, 11 BAC clones were identified from Brassica rapa. Seven unique sequences of ORFs designated the Phi class candidates of GST derived from B. rapa (BrGSTFs) were detected from these 11 BAC clones by blast search and sequence alignment. Some of BrGSTFs were present in the same BAC clones indicating that BrGSTFs could also be clustered as usual in plant. They were mapped on B. rapa linkage group 2, 3, 9 and 10 and their nucleotide and amino acid sequences were highly similar to those of AtGSTFs. In addition, in silico analysis of BrGSTFs using Korea Brassica Genome Project 24K oligochip and microarray database for cold, salt and drought stresses revealed 15 unigenes to be highly similar to AtGSTFs and six of these were identical to one of BrGSTFs identified in the BAC clones indicating their expression. The sequences of BrGSTFs and unigenes identified in this study will facilitate further studies to apply GST genes to medical and agriculture purposes.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Crop Science Conference
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• 2017.06a
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• pp.235-235
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• 2017

Chromium (Cr) toxicity is hazardous to the seed germination, growth, and development of plants. ${\gamma}$-Aminobutyric acid (GABA) is a non-protein amino acid and is involved in stress tolerance in plants. To investigate the effects of GABA in alleviating Cr toxicity, we treated eight-d-old mustard (Brassica juncea L.) seedlings with Cr (0.15 mM and 0.3 mM $K_2CrO_4$, 5 days) alone and in combination with GABA ($125{\mu}M$) in a semi-hydroponic medium. The roots and shoots of the seedlings accumulated Cr in a dose-dependent manner, which led to an increase in oxidative damage [lipid peroxidation; hydrogen peroxide ($H_2O_2$) content; superoxide ($O{_2}^{{\cdot}-}$) generation; lipoxygenase (LOX) activity], MG content, and disrupted antioxidant defense and glyoxalase systems. Chromium stress also reduced growth, leaf relative water content (RWC), and chlorophyll (chl) content but increased phytochelatin (PC) and proline (Pro) content. Furthermore, supplementing the Cr-treated seedlings with GABA reduced Cr uptake and upregulated the non-enzymatic antioxidants (ascorbate, AsA; glutathione, GSH) and the activities of the enzymatic antioxidants including ascorbate peroxidase (APX), monodehydroascorbate reductase (MDHAR), dehydroascorbate reductase (DHAR), glutathione reductase (GR), glutathione peroxidase (GPX), superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), glyoxalase I (Gly I), and glyoxalase II (Gly II), and finally reduced oxidative damage. Adding GABA also increased leaf RWC and chl content, decreased Pro and PC content, and restored plant growth. These findings shed light on the effect of GABA in improving the physiological mechanisms of mustard seedlings in response to Cr stress.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.15 no.3 s.70
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• pp.382-386
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• 2005

To investigate the effects of simulated acid rain (SAR) on growth and biochemical defense responses of plant, garden balsam (Impatiens balsamina L.) was subjected to four levels of SAR based on pH (5.6, 4.0, 3.0, 2.0) and placed in the growth chambers for 2 weeks. SAR drastically inhibited both height and dry weight of garden balsam. The content of total carotenoid was tended to decrease, but the level of malondialdehyde was significantly increased by SAR. As the pH levels decreased from 5.6 to 2.0, the content of dehydroascorbate and oxidized glutathione of the plant were significantly increased. The enzyme (superoxide dismutase, ascorbate peroxidase etc.) activities of the plant affected by SAR were increased as the pH decreased. The results indicate that garden balsam may receive oxidative stresses by the application of SAR and by which the plant growth can be significantly retarded. A biochemical protective mechanism might be activated to nullify the oxidative stresses generated through SAR.

• Journal of Embryo Transfer
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.237-245
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• 2010

Only an optimum number of viable spermatozoa in a frozen-thawed insemination dose can ensure conception at artificial insemination (AI). We report here the percentages of normal, abnormal and viable spermatozoa present in the frozen-thawed semen of 20 Black Bengal bucks used for commercial AI. Bucks in this experiment were of 19.3~46.1 months old and 25~42 kg body weight. Four semen straws (0.25 ml) from each buck were collected for evaluation of their kinetic parameters. Scrotal circumference was measured by using a scrotal tape, sperm motility was estimated on eye estimation and sperm concentration was determined by using a haemocytometer. Sperm morphology was studied in paraformaldehyde fixed spermatozoa under differential interference contrast (DIC) microscope. To determine the proportion of live (plasma membrane intact) spermatozoa, semen was stained with SYBR-14 and propidium iodide and examined under fluorescent microscope. Scrotal circumference, post-thaw sperm motility, sperm concentration per insemination dose and proportion of normal spermatozoa were $21.5{\pm}0.7\;cm$, $43.5 {\pm}5.4%$, $83.5{\pm}6.7$ million and $88.3{\pm}4.1%$, respectively. The percentages of spermatozoa with head shape and acrosome abnormalities were lower ($2.7{\pm}1.1$ and $1.4{\pm}1.3$, respectively), whereas higher percentages of abnormalities ($7.0{\pm}1.8$) were observed in mid piece and tail portion. The proportion of live spermatozoa was $28.5{\pm}5.4$. It is concluded that although a good number of morphologically normal spermatozoa are present in the insemination dose, the proportion of live spermatozoa is low, which warrants further improvements of buck semen freezing procedures to ensure good quality at AI.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.109-117
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• 2010

Digital watermarking has drawn extensive attention for protecting digital contents from unauthorized copying. This paper proposes a new watermarking scheme in frequency domain for copyright protection of digital audio. In our proposed watermarking system, the original audio is segmented into non-overlapping frames. Watermarks are then embedded into the selected prominent peaks in the magnitude spectrum of each frame. Watermarks are extracted by performing the inverse operation of watermark embedding process. Simulation results indicate that the proposed scheme is robust against various kinds of attacks such as noise addition, cropping, resampling, re-quantization, MP3 compression, and low pass filtering. Our proposed watermarking system outperforms Cox's method in terms of imperceptibility, while keeping comparable robustness with the Cox's method. Our proposed system achieves SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) values ranging from 20 dB to 28 dB. This is in contrast to Cox's method which achieves SNR values ranging from only 14 dB to 23 dB.

• Journal of Microbiology
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• v.44 no.3
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• pp.363-368
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• 2006

In this study, native Byadyrhizobium strains were isolated from the host plant, Glycine max, harvested from fields in Madhya Pradesh, India, and were typed by Iytic rhizobiophages. Eight indigenous (Soy2, ASR011, ASR031, ASR032, MSR091, ISR050, ISR076 and ISR078) and two exotic strains (USDA123 and CB1809), all of which evidenced a distinct reaction with six phages, were employed in this study. The symbiotic interaction of these strains was studied initially using soybean cultivar JS335 in a sand culture in a controlled environment, and the efficiency was assessed based on the nodule number, nodule dry weight, plant dry weight, nitrogenase activity, and total accumulation of N per plant. Symbiotic effectiveness was found to be highest with the native phage-sensitive isolate ASR011, whereas it was at a minimum with the phage-resistant isolates, ISR050 and ISR078. Additionally, the effectiveness of these strains was evaluated using six soybean cultivars belonging to different maturity groups; namely, Brags, Lee, Pusa20, PK416, JS33S and NRC37. Analysis of variance data evidenced significant differences due to both symbionts, for the majority of the tested parameters. The CB1809, USDA123, and ASR011 strains evidenced relatively superior symbiotic effectiveness with soybean cultivars Brags, Lee and JS335. Strain ISR078 evidenced no significant responses with any of the cultivars. The ASR031 strain performed moderately well with all tested cultivars. The symbiotic response of all the strains was quite poor with cultivar PK416. Our studies showed that a significant relationship existed between the phage sensitivity and symbiotic efficiency of the bacterial strains with the host-cultivars.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.373-385
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• 2019

In this article, different frequently adopted modeling aspects of linear and nonlinear dynamic soil-structure interaction (SSI) are studied on a pile-supported integral abutment bridge structure using the open-source platform OpenSees (McKenna et al. 2000, Mazzoni et al. 2007, McKenna and Fenves 2008) for a 2D domain. Analyzed approaches are as follows: (i) free field input at the base of fixed base bridge; (ii) SSI input at the base of fixed base bridge; (iii) SSI model with two dimensional quadrilateral soil elements interacting with bridge and incident input motion propagating upwards at model bottom boundary (with and without considering the effect of abutment backfill response); (iv) simplified SSI model by idealizing the interaction between structural and soil elements through nonlinear springs (with and without considering the effect of abutment backfill response). Salient conclusions of this paper include: (i) free-field motions may differ significantly from those computed at the base of the bridge foundations, thus put a significant bias on the inertial component of SSI; (ii) conventional modeling of SSI through series of soil springs and dashpot system seems to stay on the safer side under dynamic conditions when one considers the seismic actions on the structure by considering a fully coupled SSI model; (iii) consideration of abutment-backfill in the SSI model positively affects the general response of the bridge, as a result of large passive resistance that may develop behind the abutments.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Grassland and Forage Science
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.210-216
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• 2021

Pollution of agricultural soil by alkaline salts, such as Na₂CO₃, is a critical and long-lasting problem in cultivable land. The aim of the study was to examine the putative role of citric acid (CA) in alleviating Na₂CO₃-stress in alfalfa. In this study, Na₂CO₃ significantly induced leaf chlorosis, inhibited plant growth and photosynthesis related parameters, increased hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) and reduced major antioxidant enzymes (SOD, CAD, APX) in alfalfa. However, the presence of CA these negative effects of Na₂CO₃-stress largely recovered. Interestingly, expression of antioxidant and ion transporter genes (Fe-SOD, CAT, APX, DHAR and NHX1) involved in Reactive oxygen species (ROS) homeostasis and oxidative stress tolerance in alfalfa. These findings suggest that CA-mediated Na₂CO₃ stress alleviation is an ecofriendly approach that would be useful to local farmer for alfalfa and other forage crop cultivation in alkaline soils.

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.41 no.12
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• pp.1033-1044
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• 2018

As sessile organisms, plants have evolved to adjust their growth and development to environmental changes. It has been well documented that the crosstalk between different plant hormones plays important roles in the coordination of growth and development of the plant. Here, we describe a novel recessive mutant, mildly insensitive to ethylene (mine), which displayed insensitivity to the ethylene precursor, ACC (1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid), in the root under the dark-grown conditions. By contrast, mine roots exhibited a normal growth response to exogenous IAA (indole-3-acetic acid). Thus, it appears that the growth responses of mine to ACC and IAA resemble those of weak ethylene insensitive (wei) mutants. To understand the molecular events underlying the crosstalk between ethylene and auxin in the root, we identified the MINE locus and found that the MINE gene encodes the pyridoxine 5′-phosphate (PNP)/pyridoxamine 5′-phosphate (PMP) oxidase, PDX3. Our results revealed that MINE/PDX3 likely plays a role in the conversion of the auxin precursor tryptophan to indole-3-pyruvic acid in the auxin biosynthesis pathway, in which TAA1 (TRYPTOPHAN AMINOTRANSFERASE OF ARABIDOPSIS 1) and its related genes (TRYPTOPHAN AMINOTRANSFERASE RELATED 1 and 2; TAR1 and TAR2) are involved. Considering that TAA1 and TARs belong to a subgroup of PLP (pyridoxal-5′-phosphate)-dependent enzymes, we propose that PLP produced by MINE/PDX3 acts as a cofactor in TAA1/TAR-dependent auxin biosynthesis induced by ethylene, which in turn influences the crosstalk between ethylene and auxin in the Arabidopsis root.