• Korean Journal of Environmental Biology
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.236-240
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• 2011

Mercury known as quicksilver, is the most common cause of heavy metal toxicity. Toxicity caused by excessive mercury exposure is now being recognized as a widespread environmental problem and is continuing to attract a great deal of public concerns. The mercury genotoxicity could be its effect on DNA repair mechanisms, which constitute the defense system designated to protect genome integrity. The objective of this study is to confirm that mercuric chloride inhibits the repair of gamma ray-induced DNA damage. The earthworm of Eisenia fetida was chosen for this study because it is an internationally accepted model species for toxicity testing with a cosmopolitan distribution. Experiments were done to identify the levels of DNA damage and the repair kinetics in the coelomocytes of E. fetida irradiated with 20 Gy gamma rays alone or with gamma rays after 40 mg $kg^{-1}$ $HgCl_2$ treatment by means of the single cell gel electrophoresis assay. The Olive tail moments were measured during 0~96 hours after irradiation. The repair time in the animals treated with the combination of $HgCl_2$ and ionizing radiation was nearly five times longer than that in the animals treated with ionizing radiation alone. Also, E. fetida exposed to mercury showed a statistically lower repair efficiency of gamma ray-induced DNA damage. The results suggest that the mercury could even have deleterious effects on the DNA repair system. Influence of mercury on the DNA repair mechanisms has been confirmed by this study.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.82-87
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• 1995

The standardization of test procedures and reproducibility of the toxicity data are prerequisite for the toxicity testing with the earthworm culturing in the laboratory. No in-depth study on culturing conditions of earthworms has been conducted in Korea, even of massive cultural practice is common for composting and production of biochemicals. The earthworms, Lumbricus rubellus and Eisenia foetida, were cultured in three kinds of artificial soil substrates(I, II and III) based on the OECD Guideline, which consist of different ratios of components (sand, sphagnum peat and kaolinite), and fed with a mixture of grain powders. During the period of culturing, the body weight and reproduction parameters were measured. L. rubellus showed the best results for increasing body weight and cocoon production in the artificial soil substrate(I) compared with E. foetida. The cocoon production was significantly high in both species cultured in the artificial soil substrate(I) among the three kinds of soil substrates, but the cumulative cocoon production of L. rubellus was 11 cocoon per worm compared with 3.7 cocoons per worm of E.foetida. L. rubellus, therefore, was more prolific than E. foetida in these culture schemes. The cumulative mortality in both species was less than 10%, and the number of juvenile worms per cocoon ranged from 1.5 to 2.3 and thus did not show any relationships with soil substrates or species. From these data, the culture of L. rubellus in the laboratory could be standardized, but for E. foetida, further study would be necessary to establish the optimal growth conditions in the laboratory.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.80-89
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• 2007

Two endogenous endo-${\beta}$-1,4-D-glucanase (EGase, EC 3.2.1.4) cDNAs were cloned from the midgut of the earthworm Eisenia anderi, and named EaEG2 and EaEG3, respectively. A sequence of 1,368 bp was determined and the coding region is composed of 456 amino acid residues including the initiation methionine. The N-terminal region of 20 residues in the deduced sequence was regarded as the signal peptide. These EGases belong to glycosyl hydrolase family 9 (GHF9) and showed high levels of identity(51-55%) with selected termite, cockroache, crayfish and mollusc EGases. The EGases of earthworm consist of three consensus catalytic domains found in most microbial cellulases. A phylogenetic tree was constructed using the deduced amino acid sequence data matched through the BLASTX program and showed that GHF9 families could be divided into five groups of arthropoda, bacteria, plant, annelida and mollusc.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.101-109
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• 2006

Earthworms(Eisenia fetida) were fed with paper mill sludge produced from P&G or Yuhan Kimberly paper manufacturing factory, or cow dung manure. Turnover rate of feed into earthworm biomass and excreting rate on each feed were investigated on dry weight base. Biomass of earthworm population was increased on paper mill sludge, but it was fallen to death on cow dung manure, which had high electrical conductivity and low redox potential. When P&G paper mill sludge was supplied to adult, elder juvenile or younger juvenile for 84 days, turnover rate of feed into earthworm biomass was 0.48, 0.40 and 0.76%, respectively, and on Yuhan Kimberly paper mill sludge 0.26, 0.45, 0.42%. When P&G paper mill sludge was supplied to adult, elder juvenile or younger juvenile, excreting rate was 49.02, 54.32 and 55.39%, respectively and on Yuhan Kimberly paper mill sludge 32.22, 41.86, 40.69%, and on cow dung manure, 73.73, 57.89. 76.38%.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.112-118
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• 2013

This study was performed to investigate the possible use of Eisenia bicyclis (EB) ethanol extract to inhibit activity against lipase. In tests, the lipase inhibitory activity of EB ethanol extract was noted as being 43, 27, and 24% at concentrations of 5, 2.5, and 1 mg/ml, respectively. Isolation was carried out by liquid and liquid extraction, silica-gel column chromatography, and HPLC. The results showed that the lipase inhibitory activity of the ethyl acetate (EA) fraction from EB ethanol extract exhibited the strongest lipase inhibitory activity with an $IC_{50}$ value of 1.31 mg/ml. The EA fraction was separated using silica-gel column chromatography and we obtained 22 sub-fractions. Amongst them, the EA1 fraction showed the highest lipase inhibitory activity with an $IC_{50}$ value of 0.54 mg/ml. Eight peaks were obtained from the EA1 fraction by HPLC. Fraction 5 also showed a strong lipase inhibitory activity with an $IC_{50}$ value of 0.37 mg/ml. The fraction 5 was identified as dieckol and the inhibition pattern analyzed from Lineweaver-Burk plots revealed a non-competitive inhibitor. These results suggest that EB has potential as a natural anti-obesity agent.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Science and Nutrition
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.78-86
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• 2006

Laminarans with different purity were prepared from Eisenia bicyclis and their structures were characterized. Crude laminaran was successively extracted two times at room temperature for 2 hr with 0.09 N HCl, and partially purified laminaran was isolated using cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC). Crude laminaran accounted for $14.5\%$ of the dry seaweed weight and contained $8.4\%$ protein, $7.6\%$ sulfate and $68.2\%$ polysaccharide. Partially purified laminaran accounted for $6.5\%$ of the dry algal weight and composed of $3.8\%$ protein, $3.2\%$ sulfate and $74.7\%$ total sugar, which is mainly composed of glucose $(83.3\%)$, indicating that partially purified laminaran was more purified polysaccharide than crude laminaran. Purified laminaran was fractionated into one fractions by Sephacryl S-300 HR column chromatography and this fraction was analysed by FT-IR, $^{13}C$ NMR, methylation and gel filtration chromatography. Purified laminaran showed $\beta-configuration$ $(^{13}C:103.0ppm,\;FT-IR:888cm^{-1})$ in the anomerization of the glycosidic linkages and was $(1\rightarrow3),\;(1\rightarrow6)$ linked $\beta-glucan$. The average molecular weight of purified laminaran was 12,600 dalton.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.114-117
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• 2007

The effects of faecally excreted ivermectin on the survival and growth of the common Korea earthworm Eisenia fetida (Savigny), have been studied in the laboratory. Cow dung was collected 1, 2, 3 and 7 days after ivermectin subcutaneous injection. The mortality of the worms provided with untreated dung was 0% whereas mortality within a week was high as 73.7%, 98.3% in dung which were excreted 1 and 2 days from dosing, respectively. The growth rate of the worms fed dung from 1 day excreted dung from cattle given ivermectin was 75% lower than that recorded on the control. In total number of hatchling earthworm in each treatment, 1 day after treatment produced the lowest compared with untreated control. However, dung from cattle treated with ivermectin did not prevented the rate of hatchling from each cocoon of earthworm. The results show that ivermectin is less toxic to $2^{nd}$ generation of earthworm. We concluded that ivermectin have adverse effects on the survival and growth of E. fetida when exposed through dung under laboratory conditions. This results will be discussed in relation to the effects of anthelmintics on non-target organism in our ecosystem.

• Journal of Climate Change Research
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.277-284
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• 2014

Biochar application to soil is widely known to have effects of climate change mitigation and soil quality improvement. However, effects of biochar on soil ecosystem are not always positive and some biochars are reported to contain toxic materials which might influence soil ecosystem. In this context, this study aims to investigate behavioral changes of earthworms(Eisenia fetida, Eisenia andrei) in response to different application rates of biochar to artificial soil. Treatment included two types of biochars made from rice husk (RH_Char) and wastewater sludge (SL_Char) with 1% and 10% application rates, respectively. Avoidance test revealed that earthworms did not avoid SL_Char treatments at 1% and 10%, while they rather moved to the RH_Char treatments probably due to higher labile carbon content(Hot water extractable carbon) of the RH_Char. The HWC content of RH_Char was 4 times higher than that of the SL_Char. Results of reproduction test showed that the survival rates, number of juveniles and number of cocoons were not influenced by biochar application except for the treatment of SL_Char at 10% rate. In the SL_Char 10% treatment, fatality was approximately 3.3 times as high as the control and the number of cocoons was 1.3 times higher in the same treatment than the control, indicating that earthworms were under environmental stress. The possible explanation for the stress condition was related to higher Cd, Ni, Cr, and As contents in the SL_Char. Overall results imply that biochar application at low rate might not change earthworms' behavior for the short term, while the reproduction behavior might be negatively influenced under the high application rate.

• Proceedings of the Zoological Society Korea Conference
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• 1998.04a
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• pp.47.2-47
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• 1998

No Abstract, See Full Text

• Proceedings of the Zoological Society Korea Conference
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• 1998.04a
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• pp.53.1-53
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• 1998

No Abstract, See Full Text