• Title/Summary/Keyword: Event-Related Potentials

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Role of Citrate Synthase in Acetate Utilization and Protection from Stress-Induced Apoptosis

  • Lee, Yong-Joo;Kang, Hong-Yong;Maeng, Pil Jae
    • Proceedings of the Microbiological Society of Korea Conference
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    • 2008.05a
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    • pp.39-41
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    • 2008
  • The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been shown to contain three isoforms of citrate synthase (CS). The mitochondrial CS, Cit1, catalyzes the first reaction of the TCA cycle, i.e., condensation of acetyl-CoA and oxaloacetate to form citrate [1]. The peroxisomal CS, Cit2, participates in the glyoxylate cycle [2]. The third CS is a minor mitochondrial isofunctional enzyme, Cit3, and related to glycerol metabolism. However, the level of its intracellular activity is low and insufficient for metabolic needs of cells [3]. It has been reported that ${\Delta}cit1$ strain is not able to grow with acetate as a sole carbon source on either rich or minimal medium and that it shows a lag in attaining parental growth rates on nonfermentable carbon sources [2, 4, 5]. Cells of ${\Delta}cit2$, on the other hand, have similar growth phenotype as wild-type on various carbon sources. Thus, the biochemical basis of carbon metabolism in the yeast cells with deletion of CIT1 or CIT2 gene has not been clearly addressed yet. In the present study, we focused our efforts on understanding the function of Cit2 in utilizing $C_2$ carbon sources and then found that ${\Delta}cit1$ cells can grow on minimal medium containing $C_2$ carbon sources, such as acetate. We also analyzed that the characteristics of mutant strains defective in each of the genes encoding the enzymes involved in TCA and glyoxylate cycles and membrane carriers for metabolite transport. Our results suggest that citrate produced by peroxisomal CS can be utilized via glyoxylate cycle, and moreover that the glyoxylate cycle by itself functions as a fully competent metabolic pathway for acetate utilization in S. cerevisiae. We also studied the relationship between Cit1 and apoptosis in S. cerevisiae [6]. In multicellular organisms, apoptosis is a highly regulated process of cell death that allows a cell to self-degrade in order for the body to eliminate potentially threatening or undesired cells, and thus is a crucial event for common defense mechanisms and in development [7]. The process of cellular suicide is also present in unicellular organisms such as yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae [8]. When unicellular organisms are exposed to harsh conditions, apoptosis may serve as a defense mechanism for the preservation of cell populations through the sacrifice of some members of a population to promote the survival of others [9]. Apoptosis in S. cerevisiae shows some typical features of mammalian apoptosis such as flipping of phosphatidylserine, membrane blebbing, chromatin condensation and margination, and DNA cleavage [10]. Yeast cells with ${\Delta}cit1$ deletion showed a temperature-sensitive growth phenotype, and displayed a rapid loss in viability associated with typical apoptotic hallmarks, i.e., ROS accumulation, nuclear fragmentation, DNA breakage, and phosphatidylserine translocation, when exposed to heat stress. Upon long-term cultivation, ${\Delta}cit1$ cells showed increased potentials for both aging-induced apoptosis and adaptive regrowth. Activation of the metacaspase Yca1 was detected during heat- or aging-induced apoptosis in ${\Delta}cit1$ cells, and accordingly, deletion of YCA1 suppressed the apoptotic phenotype caused by ${\Delta}cit1$ mutation. Cells with ${\Delta}cit1$ deletion showed higher tendency toward glutathione (GSH) depletion and subsequent ROS accumulation than the wild-type, which was rescued by exogenous GSH, glutamate, or glutathione disulfide (GSSG). Beside Cit1, other enzymes of TCA cycle and glutamate dehydrogenases (GDHs) were found to be involved in stress-induced apoptosis. Deletion of the genes encoding the TCA cycle enzymes and one of the three GDHs, Gdh3, caused increased sensitivity to heat stress. These results lead us to conclude that GSH deficiency in ${\Delta}cit1$ cells is caused by an insufficient supply of glutamate necessary for biosynthesis of GSH rather than the depletion of reducing power required for reduction of GSSG to GSH.

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Effects of Customers' Relationship Networks on Organizational Performance: Focusing on Facebook Fan Page (고객 간 관계 네트워크가 조직성과에 미치는 영향: 페이스북 기업 팬페이지를 중심으로)

  • Jeon, Su-Hyeon;Kwahk, Kee-Young
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
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    • v.22 no.2
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    • pp.57-79
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    • 2016
  • It is a rising trend that the number of users using one of the social media channels, the Social Network Service, so called the SNS, is getting increased. As per to this social trend, more companies have interest in this networking platform and start to invest their funds in it. It has received much attention as a tool spreading and expanding the message that a company wants to deliver to its customers and has been recognized as an important channel in terms of the relationship marketing with them. The environment of media that is radically changing these days makes possible for companies to approach their customers in various ways. Particularly, the social network service, which has been developed rapidly, provides the environment that customers can freely talk about products. For companies, it also works as a channel that gives customized information to customers. To succeed in the online environment, companies need to not only build the relationship between companies and customers but focus on the relationship between customers as well. In response to the online environment with the continuous development of technology, companies have tirelessly made the novel marketing strategy. Especially, as the one-to-one marketing to customers become available, it is more important for companies to maintain the relationship marketing with their customers. Among many SNS, Facebook, which many companies use as a communication channel, provides a fan page service for each company that supports its business. Facebook fan page is the platform that the event, information and announcement can be shared with customers using texts, videos, and pictures. Companies open their own fan pages in order to inform their companies and businesses. Such page functions as the websites of companies and has a characteristic of their brand communities such as blogs as well. As Facebook has become the major communication medium with customers, companies recognize its importance as the effective marketing channel, but they still need to investigate their business performances by using Facebook. Although there are infinite potentials in Facebook fan page that even has a function as a community between users, which other platforms do not, it is incomplete to regard companies' Facebook fan pages as communities and analyze them. In this study, it explores the relationship among customers through the network of the Facebook fan page users. The previous studies on a company's Facebook fan page were focused on finding out the effective operational direction by analyzing the use state of the company. However, in this study, it draws out the structural variable of the network, which customer committment can be measured by applying the social network analysis methodology and investigates the influence of the structural characteristics of network on the business performance of companies in an empirical way. Through each company's Facebook fan page, the network of users who engaged in the communication with each company is exploited and it is the one-mode undirected binary network that respectively regards users and the relationship of them in terms of their marketing activities as the node and link. In this network, it draws out the structural variable of network that can explain the customer commitment, who pressed "like," made comments and shared the Facebook marketing message, of each company by calculating density, global clustering coefficient, mean geodesic distance, diameter. By exploiting companies' historical performance such as net income and Tobin's Q indicator as the result variables, this study investigates influence on companies' business performances. For this purpose, it collects the network data on the subjects of 54 companies among KOSPI-listed companies, which have posted more than 100 articles on their Facebook fan pages during the data collection period. Then it draws out the network indicator of each company. The indicator related to companies' performances is calculated, based on the posted value on DART website of the Financial Supervisory Service. From the academic perspective, this study suggests a new approach through the social network analysis methodology to researchers who attempt to study the business-purpose utilization of the social media channel. From the practical perspective, this study proposes the more substantive marketing performance measurements to companies performing marketing activities through the social media and it is expected that it will bring a foundation of establishing smart business strategies by using the network indicators.