• Mycobiology
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• v.47 no.4
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• pp.449-456
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• 2019

Invasive fungal infections caused by Cyberlindnera fabianii have recently increased. However, biochemical kits such as API 20 C AUX and Vitek-2C have misidentified this species as other Candida spp. such as C. pelliculosa or C. utilis due to no information of Cy. fabianii in yeast database. During our 2016-2017 surveys, eleven isolates of Cy. fabianii were obtained in International St. Mary's Hospital in Korea. Here, we describe its morphological and molecular characteristics and tested its antifungal susceptibility against nine antifungal agents. The sequences of the ITS region and the D1/D2 region of LSU revealed 100% identity with the sequences of Cy. fabianii. In comparison with the results from MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry, we found that Cy. fabianii can be distinguished from other species. In antifungal susceptibility test, voriconazole and echinocandins exhibited good antifungal activities against the majority of Cy. fabianii isolates despite the absence of standard criteria.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.501-509
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• 2012

A 990 bp full-length gene (xynAHJ2) encoding a 329-residue polypeptide (XynAHJ2) with a calculated mass of 38.4 kDa was cloned from Bacillus sp. HJ2 harbored in a saline soil. XynAHJ2 showed no signal peptide, distinct amino acid stretches of glycoside hydrolase (GH) family 10 intracellular endoxylanases, and the highest amino acid sequence identity of 65.3% with the identified GH 10 intracellular mesophilic endoxylanase iM-KRICT PX1-Ps from Paenibacillus sp. HPL-001 (ACJ06666). The recombinant enzyme (rXynAHJ2) was expressed in Escherichia coli and displayed the typical characteristics of low-temperature-active enzyme (exhibiting optimum activity at $35^{\circ}C$, 62% at $20^{\circ}C$, and 38% at $10^{\circ}C$; thermolability at ${\geq}45^{\circ}C$). Compared with the reported GH 10 low-temperature-active endoxylanases, which are all extracellular, rXynAHJ2 showed low amino acid sequence identities (<45%), low homology (different phylogenetic cluster), and difference of structure (decreased amount of total accessible surface area and exposed nonpolar accessible surface area). Compared with the reported GH 10 intracellular endoxylanases, which are all mesophilic and thermophilic, rXynAHJ2 has decreased numbers of arginine residues and salt bridges, and showed resistance to $Ni^{2+}$, $Ca^{2+}$, or EDTA at 10 mM final concentration. The above mechanism of structural adaptation for low-temperature activity of intracellular endoxylanase rXynAHJ2 is different from that of GH 10 extracellular low-temperature-active endoxylanases. This is the first report of the molecular and biochemical characterizations of a novel intracellular low-temperature-active xylanase.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.518-524
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• 2010

A mannanase gene (man26B) was obtained from a sea bacterium, Paenibacillus sp. BME-14, through the constructed genomic library and inverse PCR. The gene of man26B had an open reading frame of 1,428 bp that encoded a peptide of 475- amino acid residues with a calculated molecular mass of 53 kDa. Man26B possessed two domains, a carbohydrate binding module (CBM) belonging to family 6 and a family 26 catalytic domain (CD) of glycosyl hydrolases, which showed the highest homology to Cel44C of P. polymyxa (60% identity). The optimum pH and temperature for enzymatic activity of Man26B were 4.5 and $60^{\circ}C$, respectively. The activity of Man26B was not affected by $Mg^{2+}$ and $Co^{2+}$, but was inhibited by $Hg^{2+},\;Ca^{2+},\;Cu^{2+},\;Mn^{2+},\;K^+,\;Na^+$, and $\beta$-mercaptoethanol, and slightly enhanced by $Pb^{2+}$ and $Zn^{2+}$. EDTA did not affect the activity of Man26B, which indicates that it does not require divalent ions to function. Man26B showed a high specific activity for LBG and konjac glucomannan, with $K_m,\;V_{max}$, and $k_{cat}$ values of 3.80 mg/ml, 91.70 ${\mu}mol$/min/mg protein, and 77.08/s, respectively, being observed when LBG was the substrate. Furthermore, deletion of the CBM6 domain increased the enzyme stability while enabling it to retain 80% and 60% of its initial activity after treatment at $80^{\circ}C$ and $90^{\circ}C$ for 30 min, respectively. This finding will be useful in industrial applications of Man26B, because of the harsh circumstances associated with such processes.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.52 no.1
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• pp.93-97
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• 2014

Subolesin (4D8), the ortholog of insect akirins, is a highly conserved protective antigen and thus has the potential for development of a broad-spectrum vaccine against ticks and mosquitoes. To date, no protective antigens have been characterized nor tested as candidate vaccines against Dermacentor silvarum bites and transmission of associated pathogens. In this study, we cloned the open reading frame (ORF) of D. silvarum 4D8 cDNA (Ds4D8), which consisted of 498 bp encoding 165 amino acid residues. The results of sequence alignments and phylogenetic analysis demonstrated that D. silvarum 4D8 (Ds4D8) is highly conserved showing more than 81% identity of amino acid sequences with those of other hard ticks. Additionally, Ds4D8 containing restriction sites was ligated into the pET-32(a+) expression vector and the recombinant plasmid was transformed into Escherichia coli rosetta. The recombinant Ds4D8 (rDs4D8) was induced by isopropyl ${\beta}$-D-thiogalactopyranoside (IPTG) and purified using Ni affinity chromatography. The SDS-PAGE results showed that the molecular weight of rDs4D8 was 40 kDa, which was consistent with the expected molecular mass considering 22 kDa histidine-tagged thioredoxin (TRX) protein from the expression vector. Western blot results showed that rabbit anti-D. silvarum serum recognized the expressed rDs4D8, suggesting an immune response against rDs4D8. These results provided the basis for developing a candidate vaccine against D. silvarum ticks and transmission of associated pathogens.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.22 no.8
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• pp.1024-1033
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• 2012

A gene encoding a novel geranylgeranyl pyrophosphate (GGPP) synthase from Kocuria gwangalliensis has been cloned and expressed in Escherichia coli. The deduced amino acid sequence showed 59.6% identity with a putative GGPP synthase (CrtE) from K. rhizophila. An expression plasmid containing the crtE gene was constructed, and E. coli cells containing this plasmid produced a recombinant protein with a theoretical molecular mass of 41 kDa, corresponding to the molecular weight of GGPP synthase. Due to the lack of crtE, crtB, and crtI in E. coli, the biosynthesis of lycopene was only obtained when the plasmid pCcrtE was co-transformed into E. coli expressing the pRScrtBI-carrying carotenoid biosynthesis crtB and crtI genes, which were sub-cloned from Paracoccus haeundaensis. The biochemical studies on the expressed proteins were performed via HPLC. The results obtained from this study will provide a wider base of knowledge regarding the primary structure of CrtE cloned from K. gwangalliensis at the molecular level.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.323-328
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• 2003

Soil salinity is one of the most serious abiotic stresses limiting the productivity of agricultural crops. To cope with salt stress, plants respond with physiological, developmental and biochemical changes, including the synthesis of a number of proteins and the induction of gene expression. Salicornia herbacea is a halophytic plant that grows in salt marshes and on muddy seashores. In order to understand the biochemical and molecular mechanisms of salt tolerance in S. herbacea, we isolated several genes that involved in the salt tolerance by mRNA differential display. Here we report the cloning of a cDNA encoding fructose-1, 6-bisphosphate aldolase, named ShADL, which is 1293 bp long and contains an open reading frame consisted of 359 amino acids with calculated molecular mass of 39 kDa. ShADL protein showed 86％ identity with Arabidopsis and 78％ with aldolase of common ice plant. Northern blot analysis revealed that the transcript of ShADL gene was increased dramatically depending on the NaCl concentrations.

• Solar Energy
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.41-50
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• 1991

Heat transfer phenomena and temperature characteristics in heat storage and release process in the heat storage system using PCM(Phase Change material) were studied experimentally. The melting points of Octacosane paraffin($C_{28}H_{58}$) and sodium pyrophosphate decahydrate ($Na_4P_2O_7{\cdot}10H_2O$) used for phase change materials are $62^{\circ}C$ and $79^{\circ}C$ respectively. Experiments were performed in order to investigate temperature distributions, the heat storage quantity and the release quantity on octacosane paraffin and sodium pyrophosphate decahydrate for heat storage and release in the heat storage system. Furthermore the comparison of these characteristics between paraffin and $Na_4P_2O_7{\cdot}10H_2O$ were evaluated. In case of the paraffin, temperature slowly increased at early heat storage process by natural convection, while temperature of $Na_4P_2O_7{\cdot}10H_2O$ rapidly increased the dominant role played by conduction at early heat storage processing Also, during the heat storage and release process in case of the paraffin, it was observed that the variation of temperature of the neighborhood of wall and center in the top and bottom of the tube exhibited a great difference, however in $Na_4P_2O_7{\cdot}10H_2O$, it was observed that the variation of temperature exhibited a little difference. And heat storage quantity of each PCM of identity mass in heat storage process was shown that $Na_4P_2O_7{\cdot}10H_2O$ exhibited more by 16 percents than paraffin.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information Security & Cryptology
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.795-807
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• 2014

Vehicular Ad hoc Network (VANET) has gone through a rich amount of research and currently is making its way towards the deployment. However, surprisingly it evolved to rather more applications and services-rich breed referred to as VANET-based clouds due to the advancements in the automobile and communication technologies. Security and privacy have always been the challenges for the think tanks to deploy this technology on mass scale. It is even worse that some security issues are orthogonally related to each other such as privacy, revocation and route tracing. In this paper, we aim at a specific VANET-based clouds framework proposed by Hussain et al. namely VANET using Clouds (VuC) where VANET and cloud infrastructure cooperate with each other in order to provide VANET users (more precisely subscribers) with services. We specifically target the aforementioned conflicted privacy, route tracing, and revocation problem in VANET-based clouds environment. We propose a multiple pseudonymous approach for privacy reasons and leverage the beacons stored in the cloud infrastructure for both route tracing and revocation. In the proposed scheme, revocation authorities after colluding, can trace the path taken by the target node for a specified timespan and can also revoke the identity if needed. Our proposed scheme is secure, conditional privacy preserved, and is computationally less expensive than the previously proposed schemes.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Illuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.22-30
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• 2004

It is an attempt to suggest the standard valuation method of the environmental illumination for the bridges across the Han-river from an aesthetic point of view, deviating from the technical and traditional viewpoint. In Korea the current evaluation criterion to verify the value of bridge design has a partiality for the technical and structural safety rather than the sentient beauty on the whole. However, the recently cultural reform of Korean mass society with the elevation of the standard of living forces the engineering designers for bridges to focus not only on competing physical structures but also on enhancing the formative beauty including the illumination effects for night view. Additionally, the new policy, which transforms the environments around the Han-river into the major tourist attractions has been executing strongly by the city authorities to revitalize the symbolic, historic, and cultural identity of the capital city with the introduction of the high-quality environmental illumination for the bridges. As a result, It becomes necessary to establish the manual and standardization of the environmental illumination planning for the city in terms of the formative beauty, and this study is to suggest the valuation model method of the environmental illumination for the bridges as the initial step of the standardization. In the study, the valuation items of the standard questionnaire are selected by the documentary records and the consultation of various experts in architecture, design, fine art, urban planning and even administration to verify the essential elements of the aesthetic beauty with the local amenity and the environmental harmony for the chosen bridges across the Han-river.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare Studies
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.181-211
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• 2009

Asian Americans are one of the fastest growing minority groups in the United States. One of the stereotypes associated with Asians is that they are more likely to choose careers in science, medicine, and engineering rather than social science, inclusive of social work, mass communication, or humanities (Leong & Serafica, 1995; Tang et al., 1999). This occupational stereotyping of Asians is not just a myth in that only a few Asians choose social work as a career (Lennon, 2005; NASW, 2006). Few studies exist on Asian Americans who do not choose Asian stereotypical career choices, such as social work. Acknowledging this lack of research, the present study was developed to explore the relationships between factors that may influence Asian Americans who choose social work as their career. Based on Social Cognitive Career Theory (Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994), it was hypothesized that acculturation and family immigration status influenced parental involvement, disapproval by significant others as a perceived career barrier among Asian American social workers. A cross-sectional survey design was used in this study. The sample was derived from the members'database of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW). A total of 900 were randomly chosen among 1,802 of Asian American social workers in the NASW database, and 370 Asian American social workers participated in this study with 41 percent of a return rate. Quantitative data were collected through standardized measurements: Suinn-Lew Asian Self-Identity Acculturation Scale (Suinn, Rickard-Figueroa, Lew, & Vigil, 1987); Career Barriers Inventory Revised (Swanson, et al., 1996); and eight items from Tang et al.'s (1999) Asian American Career Development Questionnaire. The data were collected through a combined method of an online survey with option of a paper mail-return questionnaire. Results of the study found significant group differences among family immigration status groups on parental involvement, and perceived likelihood and hindrance of disapproval by significant others. The group of the 2nd generation reported the highest scores of parental involvement among the family immigration status groups. Also, Asian American social workers who represented the 3rd and higher generation of immigration reported lowest perceived likelihood and hindrance scores of disapproval by significant others. However, there was no significant multivariate effect of acculturation on parental involvement, and perceived likelihood and hindrance of disapproval by significant others. Implications and limitations of this study, as well as suggestions for future research, are discussed.