• Nutrition Research and Practice
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.317-321
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• 2008

Macrophages play a key role in iron metabolism by recycling iron through erythrophagocytosis. Ferroportin-l (FPN1) is a transporter protein that is known to mediate iron export from macrophages. Since divalent metals often interact with iron metabolism, we examined if divalent metals could regulate the expression of FPN1 in macrophages. J774 macrophage cells were treated with copper, manganese, zinc, or cobalt at 10, 50, or $100\;{\mu}M$ for 16 to 24 h. Then, FPN1 mRNA and protein levels were determined by quantitative real-time PCR and Western blot analyses, respectively. In addition, effects of divalent metals on FPN1 promoter activity were examined by luciferase reporter assays. Results showed that copper significantly increased FPN1 mRNA levels in a dose-dependent manner. The copper-induced expression of FPN1 mRNA was associated with a corresponding increase in FPN1 protein levels. Also, copper directly stimulated the activity of FPN1 promoter-driven reporter construct. In contrast, manganese and zinc had no effect on the FPN1 gene expression in J774 cells. Interestingly, cobalt treatment in J774 cells decreased FPN1 protein levels without affecting FPN1 mRNA levels. In conclusion, our study results demonstrate that divalent metals differentially regulate FPN1 expression in macrophages and indicate a potential interaction of divalent metals with the FPN1-mediated iron export in macrophages.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.20 no.12
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• pp.1791-1797
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• 2007

A study was conducted with 70 Hanwoo (Korean cattle) for genotyping bovine leukocyte antigen (BoLA)-DRB3.2 gene by using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and sequence based typing (SBT). Two-step PCR was carried out for amplifying a 284 bp fragment of the target gene and the PCR products were digested with three restriction enzymes namely RsaI, BstYI and HaeIII. Seventeen alleles were detected with frequencies ranging from 1.43 to 18.57% and one (x'aa) of these alleles was identified as a new allele that has not been reported before. The frequency of the new x'aa allele identified in this breed was 12.86%. In addition, the seven most frequently observed alleles (DRB3.2 *10, *15, *16, *26, *27, *54 and x'aa) accounted for 74.28% of the alleles in this population. The phylogenetic tree showed that the BoLA-DRB3.2 allele sequences of Hanwoo were shared with other Bos taurus breeds and no specific clade for Hanwoo was identified. It indicates high heterogeneity of the BoLA-DRB3 gene in this population and may give some ideas for breeding animals having better disease resistance.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.10 no.12
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• pp.1172-1180
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• 2004

Recently, the gene expression data, product of high-throughput technology, appeared in earnest and the studies related with it (so-called bioinformatics) occupied an important position in the field of biological and medical research. The microarray is a revolutionary technology which enables us to monitor several thousands of genes simultaneously and thus to gain an insight into the phenomena in the human body (e.g. the mechanism of cancer progression) at the molecular level. To obtain useful information from such gene expression measurements, it is essential to analyze the data with appropriate techniques. However the high-dimensionality of the data can bring about some problems such as curse of dimensionality and singularity problem of matrix computation, and hence makes it difficult to apply conventional data analysis methods. Therefore, the development of method which can effectively treat the data becomes a challenging issue in the field of computational biology. This research focuses on the gene selection and classification for cancer subtype discrimination based on gene expression (microarray) data.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Developmental Biology Conference
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• 2001.10a
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• pp.14-17
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• 2001

Positional clonging (map-based cloning) of mutations or genetic variations has been served as an invaluable tool to understand in-vivo functions of genes and to identify molecular components underlying phenotypes of interest. Mice homozygous for the cerebellar deficient folia (cdf) mutation are ataxic, with cerebellar hypoplasia and abnormal lobulation of the cerebellum. In the cdf mutant cerebellum approximately 40% of Purkinje cells are ectopically located within the white matter and the inner granule cell layer (IGL). To identify the cdf gene, a high-resolution genetic map for the cdf-gene-encompassing region was constructed using 1997 F2 mice generated from C3H/HeSnJ-cdf/cdf and CAST/Ei intercross. The cdf gene showed complete linkage disequilibrium with three tightly linked markers D6Mit208, D6Mit359, and D6Mit225. A contig using YAC, BAC, and P1 clones was constructed for the cdf critical region to identify the gene. A deletion in the cdf critical region on chromosome 6 that removes approximately 150 kb of DNA selection. cdf mutant mice with the transgenic copy of the identified gene restored the brain abnormalities of the mutant mice. The positional cloning of cdf gene provides a good example showing the identification of a gene could lead to finding a new component of important molecular pathways.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.13 no.12
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• pp.1653-1658
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• 2000

Insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) mRNA levels in the eyes, heart, liver and breast muscle removed from dwarf egg-type, normal egg-type and normal meat-type chicken embryos at 7, 14 and 20 days of incubation were measured. There was no influence of chicken strain on IGF-I gene expression in the eyes and liver. The IGF-I gene expression in eyes increased significantly along with the incubation period. In the liver, IGF-I gene expression at 20 days of incubation was significantly higher than that at 14 days of incubation. In the muscle, the lowest value for IGF-I gene expression was observed in meat-type chicken embryos. Regression analysis revealed that IGF-I gene expression was significantly correlated to the weights of the eyes and liver, but not the muscle. We conclude that there is little influence of strain on tissue IGF-I gene expression in chicken embryos during incubation but that tissue development in chicken embryos is nevertheless at least partly regulated by the change in IGF-I gene expression.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.292-301
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• 2010

Follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) is a pituitary glycoprotein hormone that is encoded by separate alpha- and betasubunit genes. It plays a key role in stimulating and regulating ovarian follicular development and egg production in chicken. FSH signal transduction is mediated by the FSH receptor (FSHR) that exclusively interacts with the beta-subunit of FSH, but characterization of prokaryotic expression of the FSHb gene and its effect on the expression of the FSHR gene in local chickens have received very little attention. In the current study, the cDNA fragment of the FSHb gene from Dagu chicken was amplified using reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), and inserted into the pET-28a (+) vector to construct the pET-28a-FSHb plasmid. After expression of the plasmid in E. coli BL21 (DE3) under inducing conditions, the recombination protein, $FSH{\beta}$ subunit, was purified and injected into the experimental hens and the effect on the mRNA expression levels of the FSHR gene was investigated. Sequence comparison showed that the coding region of the FSHb gene in the local chicken shared 99%-100% homology to published nucleotides in chickens; only one synonymous nucleotide substitution was detected in the region. The encoded amino acids were completely identical with the reported sequence, which confirmed that the sequences of the chicken FSHb gene and the peptides of the $FSH{\beta}$ subunit are highly conserved. This may be due to the critical role of the normal function of the FSHb gene in hormonal specificity and regulation of reproduction. The results of gene expression revealed that a recombinant protein with a molecular weight of about 19 kDa was efficiently expressed and it was identified by Western blotting analysis. After administration of the purified $FSH{\beta}$ protein, significantly higher expression levels were demonstrated in uterus, ovary and oviduct samples (p<0.05). These observations suggested that the expressed $FSH{\beta}$ protein possesses biological activity, and has a potential role in regulation of reproductive physiology in chickens.

• 한국생물공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.04a
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• pp.563-563
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• 2005

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Developmental Biology Conference
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.130-130
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• 2005

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Embryo Transfer Conference
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.130-130
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• 2005

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Plant Pathology Conference
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• 2005.04a
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• pp.53.2-54
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• 2005