• Proceedings of the PSK Conference
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• 2001.04a
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• pp.154.1-154.1
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• 2001

• Molecular & Cellular Toxicology
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.248-255
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• 2005

To understand the response of cancer cells to anticancer drugs at the gene expression level, we examined the gene expression changes in response to five anticancer drugs, 5-fluorouracil, cytarabine, cisplatin, paclitaxel, and cytochalasin D in NCI-H460 human lung cancer cells. Of the five drugs, 5-fluorouracil had the most distinctive gene expression signature. By clustering genes whose expression changed significantly, we identified three clusters with unique gene expression patterns. The first cluster reflected the up-regulation of gene expression by cisplatin, and included genes involved in cell death and DNA repair. The second cluster pointed to a general reduction of gene expression by most of the anticancer drugs tested. A number of genes in this cluster are involved in signal transduction that is important for communication between cells and reception of extracellular signals. The last cluster represented reduced gene expression in response to 5-fluorouracil, the genes involved being implicated in DNA metabolism, the cell cycle, and RNA processing. Since the gene expression signature of 5-fluorouracil was unique, we investigated it in more detail. Significance analysis of microarray data (SAM) identified 808 genes whose expression was significantly altered by 5-fluorouracil. Among the up-regulated genes, those affecting apoptosis were the most noteworthy. The down-regulated genes were mainly associated with transcription-and translation-related processes which are known targets of 5-fluorouracil. These results suggest that the gene expression signature of an anticancer drug is closely related to its physiological action and the response of caner cells.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.747-754
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• 2005

Nutritional regulation of gene expression associated with growth and feeding behavior in avian species can become an important technique to improve poultry production according to the supply of nutrients in the diet. Insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) found in chickens has been characterized to be a 70 amino acid polypeptide and plays an important role in growth and metabolism. Although it is been well known that IGF-I is highly associated with embryonic development and post-hatching growth, changes in the distribution of IGF-I gene expression throughout early- to late-embryogenesis have not been studied so far. We revealed that the developmental pattern of IGF-I gene expression during embryogenesis differed among various tissues. No bands of IGF-I mRNA were detected in embryonic liver at 7 days of incubation, and thereafter the amount of hepatic IGF-I mRNA was increased from 14 to 20 days of incubation. In eyes, a peak in IGF-I mRNA levels occurred at mid-embryogenesis, but by contrast, IGF-I mRNA was barely detectable in the heart throughout all incubation periods. In the muscle, no significant difference in IGF-I gene expression was observed during different stages of embryogenesis. After hatching, hepatic IGF-I gene expression as well as plasma IGF-I concentration increases rapidly with age, reaches a peak before sexual maturity, and then declines. The IGF-I gene expression is very sensitive to changes in nutritional conditions. Food-restriction and fasting decreased hepatic IGF-I gene expression and refeeding restored IGF-I gene expression to the level of fed chickens. Dietary protein is also a very strong factor in changing hepatic IGF-I gene expression. Refeeding with dietary protein alone successfully restored hepatic IGF-I gene expression of fasted chickens to the level of fed controls. In most circumstances, IGF-I makes a complex with specific high-affinity IGF-binding proteins (IGFBPs). So far, four different IGFBPs have been identified in avian species and the major IGFBP in chicken plasma has been reported to be IGFBP-2. We studied the relationship between nutritional status and IGFBP-2 gene expression in various tissues of young chickens. In the liver of fed chickens, almost no IGFBP-2 mRNA was detected. However, fasting markedly increased hepatic IGFBP-2 gene expression, and the level was reduced after refeeding. In the gizzard of well-fed young chickens, IGFBP-2 gene expression was detected and fasting significantly elevated gizzard IGFBP-2 mRNA levels to about double that of fed controls. After refeeding, gizzard IGFBP-2 gene expression decreased similar to hepatic IGFBP-2 gene expression. In the brain, IGFBP-2 mRNA was observed in fed chickens and had significantly decreased by fasting. In the kidney, IGFBP-2 gene expression was observed but not influenced by fasting and refeeding. Recently, we have demonstrated in vivo that gizzard and hepatic IGFBP-2 gene expression in fasted chickens was rapidly reduced by intravenous administration of insulin, as indicated that in young chickens the reduction in gizzard and hepatic IGFBP-2 gene expression in vivo stimulated by malnutrition may be, in part, regulated by means of the increase in plasma insulin concentration via an insulin-response element. The influence of dietary protein source (isolated soybean protein vs. casein) and the supplementation of essential amino acids on gizzard IGFBP-2 gene expression was examined. In both soybean protein and casein diet groups, the deficiency of essential amino acids stimulated chickens to increase gizzard IGFBP-2 gene expression. Although amino acid supplementation of a soybean protein diet significantly decreased gizzard IGFBP-2 mRNA levels, a similar reduction was not observed in chickens fed a casein diet supplemented with amino acids. This overview of nutritional regulation of IGF-I and IGFBP-2 gene expression in young chickens would serve for the establishment of the supply of nutrients to diets to improve poultry production.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.40-44
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• 2000

The SNF2/SW ATPase/helicase family comprises proteins form a variety of species with in vivo functions, such as transcriptional regulation, maintenance of chromosome stability during mitosis, and various types of DNA repair. Here, we reported the characterization of h게2+gene which was iolated by PCR amplification using the conserved domain of SNF2 motifs. Sequence analysis of PCR product showed striking evolutionary conservation among the SNF2 family of proteins. Two transcripts of 6.7 and 3.4 Lb were detected by Northern blot analysis. furthermore, the intensities of these two bands were increased by ultraviolet(UV) irradiation. These results indicate that the hrp2+ is a novel member of the SNF2 family of proteins and is one of the UV-inducible genes in S. pombe. To determine the level of transcripts of hrp2+ gene during cellular growth, Northern blot analysis were performed. This result indicates that the level of hrp2+transcript reached its maximum before cells entered the exponential growth phase. This suggests that hrp2+ gene is experssed mainly at the early stage of cell growth.

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.409-415
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• 2007

The retinoblastoma (Rb) gene is one of the most important genes in cell cycle regulation and tumorigenesis. Homozygosity for a germ-line Rb mutation results in embryonic lethality and evokes developmental defects associated with inappropriate S-phase entry and high levels of apoptosis. Although Rb has been extensively studied, more target genes need to be identified and characterized to unravel the precise mechanism of Rb function. In order to identify Rb-regulated genes, we analyzed the gene expression profile of Rb-deficient mouse embryo fibroblasts (MEFs), and identified an unknown gene, RbEST47, that is transcriptionally upregulated in Rb-deficient MEFs. This gene is conserved from fruitfly to human. It is expressed in brain, lung, kidney, and testis, and is located on mouse chromosome 2. This region is syntenic to human chromosome 9q34.3, which frequently exhibits loss of heterozygosity in neoplastic diseases. RbEST47 was considerably down-regulated in immortalized cells, and showed cell cycle-dependent expression, suggesting important roles in S and/or G2.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.1-13
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• 2010

Evidences supporting gene-environment interaction are accumulating in terms of environmental exposure including lifestyle factors and related genetic variants. One form of defense mechanism against cancer development involves a series of genes whose role is to metabolize (activation/detoxification) and excrete potentially toxic compounds and to repair subtle mistakes in DNA. The purpose of this article is to provide a brief review of the notion of gene-environment interaction, environmental/occupational carcinogens and related cancers, and previous studies of gene-environment interaction on cancers caused by exposure to carcinogenesis. With a number of studies on the interaction between lifestyle factors (e.g., smoking and diet) and genetic polymorphisms in genes involved in xenobiotic metabolism and DNA repair excluded, only several studies have been conducted on the interactive effects between polymorphisms of CYPs, GSTs, ERCCs, XRCCs and environmental/occupational carcinogens such as vinyl chloride, benzo[a]pyrene, and chloroform on carcinogenesis or genotoxicity. Future studies may need to be conducted with sufficient number of subjects and based on occupational cohorts to provide useful information in terms of advanced risk assessment and regulation of exposure level.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Bioinformatics Conference
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.164-169
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• 2003

In this paper, we propose the integrated Bayesian network framework to reconstruct genetic regulatory networks from genome expression data. The proposed model overcomes the dimensionality problem of multivariate analysis by building coherent sub-networks from confined gene clusters and combining these networks via intermediary points. Gene Shaving algorithm is used to cluster genes that share a common function or co-regulation. Retrieved clusters incorporate prior biological knowledge such as Gene Ontology, pathway, and protein protein interaction information for extracting other related genes. With these extended gene list, system builds genetic sub-networks using Bayesian network with MDL score and Sparse Candidate algorithm. Identifying functional modules of genes is done by not only microarray data itself but also well-proved biological knowledge. This integrated approach can improve there liability of a network in that false relations due to the lack of data can be reduced. Another advantage is the decreased computational complexity by constrained gene sets. To evaluate the proposed system, S. Cerevisiae cell cycle data [1] is applied. The result analysis presents new hypotheses about novel genetic interactions as well as typical relationships known by previous researches [2].

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Applied Pharmacology
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• 1997.04a
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• pp.81-81
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• 1997

We previously demonstrated an enhancer-like positive regulatory element within a 259-bp sequence (-2352 to-2094 bp) of the human CYP1A2 gene in HepG2 cells. Three protein binding sites were identified by DNase I footprint analyses within the 259-bp sequence: protected region A PRA ( -2283 to-2243 bp), PRB (-2218 to-2187 bp), and PRC (-2124 to-2098 bp) (I. Chung and E. Bresnick, Mol. Pharmacol. 47, 677-685, 1995). In the present study, the functional significance of those protected regions was examined. Transfection experiments with deletion and substitution mutants defined the PRB and PRC as containing positive and negative regulatory elements, respectively. Human breast carcinoma MCF-7 cells were cotransfected with a hepatocyte nuclear factor-1 (HNF-1) expression vector and CYP1A2 promoter-or thymidine kinase promoter-luciferase remoter gene constructs. HNF-1, which contributes to the liver specificity of genes, enhanced reporter gene activity in a PRC sequence-dependent manner. These results suggested that PRC could exist bound to a repressor which was displaceable by other transcription factors such as HNF-1. Results obtained by transfection of HepG2 hepatoma cells with various PRB substitution mutant-luciferase gene fusion constructs indicated that the entire sequence of PRB was necessary for promoter activity. Consequently, the regulation of CYP1A3 expression is very complex, requiring a number of both positive and negative regulatory factors.

• Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology
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• v.20 no.4 s.51
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• pp.303-309
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• 2005

Essential hypertension has been considered as multifactorial disease resulted from the interaction of both environmental and genetic factors. The renin-angiotensin system (RAS) plays an important role in the regulation of blood pressure homeostasis. Recently, a homologue of angiotensin I converting enzyme, ACE2 has been focused on as a candidate gene of essential hypertension in the experiments using animal model and human being. In this study, we carried out an association study in order to clarify the relationship between the A 1075G polymorphism in the ACE2 gene and essential hypertension in Korean subjects. Because this polymorphism is located on human chromosome X, the statistical analysis for each gender was performed separately. There were no significant differences in allele distribution of the A 1075G polymorphism in the ACE2 gene between normotensives and hypertensives in the both gender groups, respectively. However, this polymorphism was significantly associated with systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) values in only female groups (P< 0.05). Thus, these results may suggest the probable role of ACE2 gene in the inter-individual susceptibility of female group to blood pressure variability.

• Proceedings of the KSAR Conference
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• 2002.06a
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• pp.87-87
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• 2002

Previously, we observed high level expression of goat β-casein/genomic hGH fusion gene in mammary gland of transgenic mice. To develop an expression vector to make a human granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (hG-CSF) protein efficiently produced in milk of transgenic animals, we designed a new bicistronic vector using the goat β-casein/genomic hGH fusion gene as regulation sequences for expression and internal ribosome entry site (IRES) as a mediator for second gene expression. This vector was constructed by insertion of encephalomyocarditis virus (EMCV) IRES-dependent second gene region coupled with hG-CSF cDNA into 3' untranslated region of an intact hGH gene. By microinjcetion, four transgenic mice were generated and three of them transmitted the bicistronic vector to their progeny. (omitted)