• BMB Reports
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• 제44권11호
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• pp.705-712
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• 2011

Advances in the fields of proteomics and genomics have necessitated the development of high-throughput screening methods (HTS) for the systematic transformation of large amounts of biological/chemical data into an organized database of knowledge. Microfluidic systems are ideally suited for high-throughput biochemical experimentation since they offer high analytical throughput, consume minute quantities of expensive biological reagents, exhibit superior sensitivity and functionality compared to traditional micro-array techniques and can be integrated within complex experimental work flows. A range of basic biochemical and molecular biological operations have been transferred to chip-based microfluidic formats over the last decade, including gene sequencing, emulsion PCR, immunoassays, electrophoresis, cell-based assays, expression cloning and macromolecule blotting. In this review, we highlight some of the recent advances in the application of microfluidics to biochemistry and molecular biology.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• 제26권2호
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• pp.213-225
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• 2016

To reduce attrition in drug development, it is crucial to consider the development and implementation of translational phenotypic assays as well as decipher diverse molecular mechanisms of action for new molecular entities. High-throughput fluorescence and confocal microscopes with advanced analysis software have simplified the simultaneous identification and quantification of various cellular processes through what is now referred to as high-content screening (HCS). HCS permits automated identification of modifiers of accessible and biologically relevant targets and can thus be used to detect gene interactions or identify toxic pathways of drug candidates to improve drug discovery and development processes. In this review, we summarize several HCS-compatible, biochemical, and molecular biology-driven assays, including immunohistochemistry, RNAi, reporter gene assay, CRISPR-Cas9 system, and protein-protein interactions to assess a variety of cellular processes, including proliferation, morphological changes, protein expression, localization, post-translational modifications, and protein-protein interactions. These cell-based assay methods can be applied to not only 2D cell culture but also 3D cell culture systems in a high-throughput manner.

• KSBB Journal
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• 제22권6호
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• pp.393-400
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• 2007

현재 많은 대학과 기업에서 다양한 방법으로 상용화가 가능한 protein microarray의 개발을 위해 많은 연구를 집중하고 있다. Protein microarray의 제작 및 분석 조건을 최적화하기 위한 연구도 진행되고 있지만 protein microarray로 부터 얻은 분석 결과를 모든 연구자들이 공유하고 통합하기 위한 노력이 절실한 실정이다. 뿐만 아니라, PCR 같은 무한 확장 방법이 존재하지 않는 단백질의 특성을 고려할 때, 좀 더 실용적인 protein microarray를 많이 만들기 위해서는 수많은 단백질들과 결합할 수 있는 특이성이 높고 결합력이 강한 capture molecule들을 개발하는 것이 필수이다. 그러나 이러한 장애에도 불구하고 protein microarray는 아주 적은 시료량으로 high-throughput assay가 가능하다는 장점 때문에 현재의 생명과학의 발전 추세로 볼 때 앞으로 protein microarray가 조만간 실용화될 것이며 이의 시장성은 매우 클 것으로 기대된다. 보다 빠른 실용화를 위해서는 protein microarray의 개발에 필요한 기반 기술의 개발과 동시에 이를 활용하기 위한 contents의 개발도 절실히 요구된다.

• 대한의생명과학회지
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• 제21권4호
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• pp.181-187
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• 2015

Osteoporosis is one of the diseases caused by accumulation of effects from complex interactions between genetic and environmental factors. Aging is the major cause for osteoporosis, which normally increases skeletal fragility and bone fracture especially among the elder. "Omics" refers to a specialized research field dealing with high-throughput biological data, such as genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics or metabolomics. Integration of data from multi-omics has been approved to be a powerful strategy to colligate biological phenomenon with multiple aspects. Actually, integrative analyses of "omics" datasets were used to present pathogenesis of specific diseases or casual biomarkers including susceptible genes. In this study, we evaluated the proposed relationship of novel susceptible genes (TREML2, HTR1E, and GLO1) with osteoporosis, which genes were obtained using multi-omics integration analyses. To this end, SNPs of the susceptible genes in the Korean female cohort were analyzed. As a result, one SNP of HTR1E and five SNPs of TREML2 were identified to associate with osteoporosis. The highest significant SNP was $rs6938076^*$ of TREML2 (OR=0.63, CI: 0.45~0.89, recessive P=0.009). Consequently, the susceptible genes identified through the multi-omics analyses were confirmed to have association with osteoporosis. Therefore, multi-omics analysis might be a powerful tool to find new genes associated with a disease. We further identified that TREML2 has more associated with osteoporosis in females than did HTR1E.

• Biotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering:BBE
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• 제7권3호
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• pp.178-184
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• 2002

High-throughput screening has become a popular method used to identify new “leads”for potentially therapeutic compounds. Further screening of these lead compounds is typically done with secondary assays which may utilize living, functioning cells as screening tools. A problem (or benefit) with these cell-based assays is that living cells are very sensitive to their environment. We have been interested in the process of stem cell migration and how it relates to the cellular therapy of bone marrow transplantation. In this study we describe a secondary, cell-based assay for screening the effects of various in-vitro conditions on Immature Hematopoietic Cell (IHC) migration. Our results have revealed many subtle factors, such as the cell's adhesive characteristics, or the effect of a culture's growth phase, that need to be accounted for in a screening protocol. Finally, we show that exponentially glowing KG1a cells (a human IHC cell line) were 10 times more motile than those in the lag or stationary phases. These data strongly suggest that KG1a cells secrete a chemokinetic factor during the exponential growth phase of a culture.

• BMB Reports
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• 제50권11호
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• pp.554-559
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• 2017

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are ~22nt-long single-stranded RNA molecules that form a RNA-induced silencing complex with Argonaute (AGO) protein to post-transcriptionally downregulate their target messenger RNAs (mRNAs). To understand the regulatory mechanisms of miRNA, discovering the underlying functional rules for how miRNAs recognize and repress their target mRNAs is of utmost importance. To determine functional miRNA targeting rules, previous studies extensively utilized various methods including high-throughput biochemical assays and bioinformatics analyses. However, targeting rules reported in one study often fail to be reproduced in other studies and therefore the general rules for functional miRNA targeting remain elusive. In this review, we evaluate previously-reported miRNA targeting rules and discuss the biological impact of the functional miRNAs on gene-regulatory networks as well as the future direction of miRNA targeting research.

• Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation
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• 제30권3호
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• pp.191-199
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• 2000

Genomics is providing targets faster than we can validate them and combinatorial chemistry is providing new chemical entities faster than we can screen them. Historically, the drug discovery cascade has been established as a sequential process initiated with a potency screening against a selected biological target. In this sequential process, pharmacokinetics was often regarded as a low-throughput activity. Typically, limited pharmacokinetics studies would be conducted prior to acceptance of a compound for safety evaluation and, as a result, compounds often failed to reach a clinical testing due to unfavorable pharmacokinetic characteristics. A new paradigm in drug discovery has emerged in which the entire sample collection is rapidly screened using robotized high-throughput assays at the outset of the program. Higher-throughput pharmacokinetics (HTPK) is being achieved through introduction of new techniques, including automation for sample preparation and new experimental approaches. A number of in vitro and in vivo methods are being developed for the HTPK. In vitro studies, in which many cell lines are used to screen absorption and metabolism, are generally faster than in vivo screening, and, in this sense, in vitro screening is often considered as a real HTPK. Despite the elegance of the in vitro models, however, in vivo screenings are always essential for the final confirmation. Among these in vivo methods, cassette dosing technique, is believed the methods that is applicable in the screening of pharmacokinetics of many compounds at a time. The widespread use of liquid chromatography (LC) interfaced to mass spectrometry (MS) or tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) allowed the feasibility of the cassette dosing technique. Another approach to increase the throughput of in vivo screening of pharmacokinetics is to reduce the number of sample analysis. Two common approaches are used for this purpose. First, samples from identical study designs but that contain different drug candidate can be pooled to produce single set of samples, thus, reducing sample to be analyzed. Second, for a single test compound, serial plasma samples can be pooled to produce a single composite sample for analysis. In this review, we validated the issue whether the second method can be applied to practical screening of in vivo pharmacokinetics using data from seven of our previous bioequivalence studies. For a given drug, equally spaced serial plasma samples were pooled to achieve a 'Pooled Concentration' for the drug. An area under the plasma drug concentration-time curve (AUC) was then calculated theoretically using the pooled concentration and the predicted AUC value was statistically compared with the traditionally calculated AUC value. The comparison revealed that the sample pooling method generated reasonably accurate AUC values when compared with those obtained by the traditional approach. It is especially noteworthy that the accuracy was obtained by the analysis of only one sample instead of analyses of a number of samples that necessitates a significant man-power and time. Thus, we propose the sample pooling method as an alternative to in vivo pharmacokinetic approach in the selection potential lead(s) from combinatorial libraries.

• 한국자원식물학회지
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• 제21권3호
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• pp.210-215
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• 2008

Gene-expression analysis is increasingly important in biological research, with real-time reverse PCR (RTPCR) becoming the method of choice for high-throughput and accurate expression profiling of selected genes. However, this technique requires important preliminary work for standardizing and optimizing the many parameters involved in the analysis. Plant stress studies are more and more based on gene expression. The analysis of gene expression requires sensitive and reproducible measurements for specific mRNA sequence. Several genes are regulated in response to abitoic stresses, such as salinity, and their gene products function in stress response and tolerance. The design of the primers and TaqMan probes for real-time PCR assays were carried out using the Primer $Express^{TM}$ software 3.0. The PCR efficiency was estimated through the linear regression of the dilution curve. To understand the expression pattern of various genes under salt stressed condition, we have developed a unique public resource of 9 stress-related genes in poplar. In this study, real-time RT-PCR was used to quantify the transcript level of 10 genes (9 stress-related genes and 1 house keeping gene) that could play a role in adaptation of Populus davidiana. Real-time RT-PCR analyses exhibited different expression ratios of related genes. The data obtained showed that determination of mRNA levels could constitute a new approach to study the stress response of P. davidiana after adaptation during growth in salinity condition.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• 제35권5호
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• pp.1279-1284
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• 2014

The binding of TATA-binding protein (TBP) to the TATA-box containing promoter region is aided by many other transcriptional factors including TFIIA and TFIIB. The mechanistic insight into the assembly of RNA polymerase II preinitation complex (PIC) has been gained by either directly altering a function of target protein or perturbing molecular interactions using drugs, RNAi, or aptamers. Aptamers have been found particularly useful for studying a role of a subset of PIC on transcription for their ability to inhibit specific molecular interactions. One major hurdle to the wide use of aptamers as specific inhibitors arises from the difficulty with traditional assays to validate and determine specificity, affinity, and binding epitopes for aptamers against targets. Here, using a technique called the bio-layer interferometry (BLI) designed for a label-free, real-time, and multiplexed detection of molecular interactions, we studied the assembly of a subset of PIC, TBP binding to TATA DNA, and two distinct classes of aptamers against TPB in regard to their ability to inhibit TBP binding to TFIIA or TATA DNA. Using BLI, we measured not only equilibrium binding constants ($K_D$), which were overall in close agreement with those obtained by electrophoretic mobility shift assay, but also kinetic constants of binding ($k_{on}$ and $k_{off}$), differentiating aptamers of comparable KDs by their difference in binding kinetics. The assay developed in this study can readily be adopted for high throughput validation of candidate aptamers for specificity, affinity, and epitopes, providing both equilibrium and kinetic information for aptamer interaction with targets.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• 제33권1호
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• pp.57-62
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• 2006

본 연구에서는 옥수수를 대상으로 glyphosate에 대한 여러 가지 생리적 반응을 검토한 후, glyphosate 저항성 평가에 활용될 수 있는 보다 개선된 방법 두 가지를 확립하였다. 한 가지 방법은 옥수수 제3엽 상단에 약제를 국소 처리한 다음, 처리 후 3일째에 약제처리 되지 않았던 제4엽의 신장 정도를 조사하는 것이다 (전식물체-엽생장 검정). 이 경우 glyphosate $50-1,600{\mu}g/mL$ 범위에서 농도가 증가됨에 따라 엽 생장이 억제되었으며, $1,600{\mu}g/mL$ 농도에서의 생장 억제율은 무처리 대비 55.5%였다. 다른 한 가지 방법은 옥수수 제3본엽의 엽절편 ($4{\times}4mm$) 4개씩을 $200{\mu}L$의 시험용액이 담긴 48 well plate에 치상한 후 $25^{\circ}C$ 연속 명조건에 24시간동안 배양하여 shikimate 축적량을 조사하는 것이다 (엽절편-shikimate 축적 검정). 이 경우 시험용액에 0.33% sucrose를 가하면 무첨가에 비해 약3-4배 정도의 shikimate 축적 증가가 관찰되었고 glyphosate $2-8{\mu}g/mL$ 농도범위에서 직선적 증가반응을 나타내어 기존방법 (Shaner et al. 2005)보다 개선된 특징을 보였다. 본 방법들은 glyphosate 저항성 옥수수를 창출할 때 또는 저항성 유전자의 타 식물로의 이동여부와 잡초화된 저항성 옥수수 존재여부를 감별하는데 활용될 수 있을 것이다. 이 때 glyphosate에 대한 저항성 원인이 작용점 EPSPS와 관련이 있는 경우에는 "엽절편-shikimate 축적 검정"이 가장 바람직하고, 저항성 원인이 체내이행 감소 때문일 경우에는 "전식물체-엽생장 검정" 수행이 필요하다.