• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.60-67
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• 2012

BACKGROUND: Anthracnose disease caused by Collectotrichum spp. is one of the most important worldwide devastating diseases in red pepper plants. Fungicides using plant extracts have several advantages, compared to synthetic chemical fungicides, because they are naturally occurring compounds, are usually safe for agricultural environment and are used for producing highly valuable agricultural products. Efforts for seeking an anti-fungal activities using naturally occurring compounds were mostly conducted from medicinal plant extracts. Sap of Rhus verniciflus was known to have healing effects on several human diseases. Recently, the extracts of Rhus verniciflus were actively tested for anti-cancer, anti-oxidative, and anti-fungal effects. In this study, the extract of Rhus verniciflus was tested for anti-fungal activity against Colletotrichum spp., which cause anthracnose in red-pepper. METHODS AND RESULTS: After neutralizing extracts of Rhus verniciflus (urushiol contents 70%) with autoclave, the crude extracts were used to investigate inhibitory effects for mycelial growth and spore germination of Colletotrichum spp. on PDA media. The mycelial growth and spore germination of Colletotrichum spp. were inhibited 18-39% and over 50% in response to crude extract of R. verniciflus (1.0 mg/mL). After spraying the extracts at the same concentrations above and then artificially inoculating Colletotrichum spp. on blue and red-pepper fruits, in vitro inhibition effects were examined. At 1.0 mg/mL, the crude extract of R. verniciflus showed inhibition activity in anthracnose incidence on blue- and red-pepper as 68.1-75.0%, through a artificial inoculation of Colletotrichum spp. in a laboratory. For in vivo inhibitory effects, the extracts (1.0, 0.1, and 0.01 mg/mL) were treated on red-pepper plants grown in green house 3 times at the interval of 1 week. Then inhibitory effects were determined by counting diseased fruits at 1 week after final treatment. The incidence of anthracnose was inhibited over 60% in the greenhouse by treatment of crude extract of R. verniciflus (1.0 mg/mL). CONCLUSION(s): Extracts of Rhus verniciflus were shown to have inhibitory effects on mycelial growth, spore germination of Colletotrichum spp. in vitro and on occurrence of anthracnose on pepper fruit in green house.

• Applied Microscopy
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.89-99
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• 2010

Fibroblasts are the most common cells in connective tissue and are responsible for the synthesis of extracellular matrix components. The fibrosis associated with chronic inflammation and injury may contribute to cholangiocarcinoma pathogenesis, particularly through an increase in extracellular matrix components, which participate in the regulation of bile duct differentiation during development. Mitochondria produce ATP through oxidative metabolism to provide energy to the cell under physiological conditions. Also, mitochondrial dysfunction and oxidative stress have been implicated in cellular senescence and aging. Alternations in mitochondrial structure and function are early events of programmed cell death or apoptosis and mitochondria appear to be a central regulator of apoptosis in most somatic cell. Clonorchis sinensis, one of the most important parasite of the human bile duct in East Asia, arouses epithelial hyperplasia and ductal fibrosis. Isolated fibroblast from the bile ducts of rats infected by C. sinensis showed increase of cytoplasmic process. In addition, decrease of cellular proliferation was observed in fibroblasts which was isolated from normal rat bile duct and then cultured in media containing C. sinensis excretory-secretory product. However, the effects of C. sinensis infection on the mitochondrial enzyme distribution is not clearly reported yet. Therefore, we investigated the structural change of C. sinensis infected bile duct and mitochondrial enzyme distribution of the cultured fibroblast isolated from the C. sinensis infected rat bile duct. As a result, C. sinensis infected SD rat bile ducts showed the features of chronic clonorchiasis, such as ductal connective and epithelial tissue dilatation, or ductal fibrosis. In addition, fibroblast in ductal connective tissue was damaged by physical effect of fibrotic tissue and chemical stimulation. Immunohistochemically detected mitochondrial electron transferase (ATPase, COXII, Porin) was decreased in C. sinensis infected rat bile duct and cultured fibroblast from infected rat bile duct. It can be hypothesized that the reason why number of electron transferase decrease in fibroblast isolated from the rat bile duct infected with C. sinensis is because dysfunction of electron transport system is occurred mitochondrial dysfunction, increase of ROS (reactive oxygen species) and apoptosis after chemical damage on the cell caused by C. sinensis infection. Overall, C. sinensis infection induces fibrotic change of ductal connective tissue, mutation of cellular metabolism in fibroblast and mitochondrial dysfunction. Consequently, ductal fibrosis inhibits fibroblast proliferation and decreases mitochondrial electron transferase on fibroblast cytoplasm. It was assumed that the structure of bile duct could not normalized and ductal fibrosis was maintained for a long period of time according to fibroblast metamorphosis and death induced by mitochondrial dysfunction.

• Applied Microscopy
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.279-284
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• 2008

The phase change materials have been extensively used as an optical rewritable data storage media utilizing their phase change properties. Recently, the phase change materials have been spotlighted for the application of non-volatile memory device, such as the phase change random access memory. In this work, we have investigated the crystallization behavior and microstructure analysis of In-Sb-Te (IST) thin films deposited by RF magnetron sputtering. Transmission electron microscopy measurement was carried out after the annealing at $300^{\circ}C$, $350^{\circ}C$, $400^{\circ}C$ and $450^{\circ}C$ for 5 min. It was observed that InSb phases change into $In_3SbTe_2$ phases and InTe phases as the temperature increases. It was found that the thickness of thin films was decreased and the grain size was increased by the bright field transmission electron microscopy (BF TEM) images and the selected area electron diffraction (SAED) patterns. In a high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) study, it shows that $350^{\circ}C$-annealed InSb phases have {111} facet because the surface energy of a {111} close-packed plane is the lowest in FCC crystals. When the film was heated up to $400^{\circ}C$, $In_3SbTe_2$ grains have coherent micro-twins with {111} mirror plane, and they are healed annealing at $450^{\circ}C$. From the HRTEM, InTe phase separation was occurred in this stage. It can be found that $In_3SbTe_2$ forms in the crystallization process as composition of the film near stoichiometric composition, while InTe phase separation may take place as the composition deviates from $In_3SbTe_2$.

• Journal of Embryo Transfer
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.157-162
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• 2006

It is well known that unidentified factors in sera, hormones and growth factors promote the proliferation of granulosa cells and nuclear maturation of bovine COCs (cumulus oocytes complexes) in vitro. Attempts had been developed the simple composition of culture media and similar system to in vivo conditions has been applied. In the present study, we investigated the effect of FGF (fibroblast growth factor) on in vitro maturation and in vitro development of Hanwoo COCs. When the COCs were matured in HPM 199 (Inst. of Functional peptide, Japan) containing 0.1, 1 and 10 ng/ml FGF for 24 hr, maturation rates to metaphase II ($70.0{\sim}75.0%$) were significantly higher (p<0.05) than that of control group (0 ng/ml FGF, 37.5%). When matured COCs with FGF were cultured in maturation medium after in vitro fertilization, developmental rates to blastocysts were 9.5, 0 and 2.9%, respectively, compared to 25.0% of the control group (p<0.05). When the matured COCs with FGF were cultured in HPM 199 (IFP971, Inst. of Functional peptide, Japan) containing 10% FBS, 0.8% BSA or 0.1% PVA (polyvinyl alcohol), the blastocyst formation rates were 12.4, 12.8 and 8.5%, respectively, while the rates of matured COCs with FGF and cultured with IVMD and IVD (Inst. of Functional peptide, Japan) without serum were 38.4% and 34.8%, respectively (p<0.05). These results suggested that FGF is available for in vitro maturation of bovine COCs and is not suitable for in vitro development, but further investigation would be need for finding the synergistic autocrine/paracrine fashion of other growth factors in early bovine embryo development.

• Horticultural Science & Technology
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.87-94
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• 2011

This study was carried out to investigate the effects of hot solution soaking and chilling treatment on sprouting and enlargement of bulblets obtained through in vitro culture in Korean native lilies with ornamental values. In vitro bulblets of Lilium cernuum, L. hansonii, L. hansonii for. mutatum, L. leichtlinii, and L. tsingtauense were soaked in distilled water or 100 $mg{\cdot}L^{-1}$ $GA_3$ and $GA_{4+7}$ solution maintained at $35^{\circ}C$ for two hours (hot water treatment) and/or exposed at $4^{\circ}C$ for 0, 4, or 8 weeks (chilling treatment) and then planted in plastic trays filled with media and grown in a greenhouse at $20^{\circ}C$ and under 16 h photoperiod. In all species, no bulblet propagated by tissue culture sprouted without chilling or hot water treatment due to dormancy. For dormancy breaking, $GA_{4+7}$ hot solution treatment increasing sprouting by 55-96%, whereas distilled water or GA was not effective in sprouting. Chilling treatment for 4 weeks induced sprouting by 50-70% in L. cernuum and L. leichtlinii, whereas 8 weeks was needed for sprouting of L. hansonii and L. hansonii for. mutatum. Combined treatment of hot water and chilling treatments synergistically promoted sprouting. Especially, in L. cernuum and L. hansonii, $GA_{4+7}$ hot solution soaking prior to chilling for 4 weeks promoted sprouting by 35-45% compared with the reverse order. Enlargement of bulblets resulted from increase in fresh weight and diameter was promoted by the treatments that increased the sprouting percentage of bulblets. Only in L. cernuum, shoots emerged from bulblets soaked in hot $GA_{4+7}$ solution or chilled at $4^{\circ}C$ and shoot emergence rate was highest in bulblets soaked in hot $GA_{4+7}$ solution and then chilled for 8 weeks. From these results, the most effective method for bulblet sprouting and enlargement was to soak in hot $GA_{4+7}$ solution and then chill for 4 weeks in L. hansonii, hansonii for. mutatum, and leichtlinii, and to soak in hot $GA_{4+7}$ solution and then chill for 4 weeks in L. cernuum and tsingtauense.

• Horticultural Science & Technology
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.426-431
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• 2012

This study was conducted to establish an efficient screening method for resistant tomato to Fusarium wilt caused by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici (FOL). The resistance degrees of the six commercial cultivars of tomato to the pathogen were evaluated by dipping roots of the seedlings in spore suspension of five FOL isolates. On the basis of the results, two cultivars (Dotaerangmaster, resistant cultivar to FOL race 1; Supersunload, resistant cultivar to FOL race 2) and two isolates (KACC40043, FOL race 2; TF104, FOL race 3) were selected for system establishment. The disease development of the FOL isolates on the cultivars according to several conditions including root wounding, incubation temperature, inoculum concentration and dipping period of roots in spore suspension was investigated. The resistance of each cultivar to the disease was a race-specific response and hardly affected by the tested conditions except for incubation temperature of $20^{\circ}C$. The optimum temperature for disease development caused by FOL was 25 to $30^{\circ}C$. On the basis of the results, we suggest that an efficient screening method for resistant tomato cultivars to Fusarium wilt is to dip the non-cut roots of tomato seedlings at two-leaf stage in spore suspension of $1{\times}10^7\;conidia{\cdot}mL^{-1}$ for 0.5 hours and transplant the seedling to plastic pot with horticulture nursery media, and then to cultivate the plants in a growth room at $25^{\circ}C$ for 3 weeks with 12 hours light a day.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.139-148
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• 2020

Infectious diseases have long plagued mankind, and predicting and preventing them has been a big challenge for mankind. For this reasen, various studies have been conducted so far to predict infectious diseases. Most of the early studies relied on epidemiological data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the problem was that the data provided by the CDC was updated only once a week, making it difficult to predict the number of real-time disease outbreaks. However, with the emergence of various Internet media due to the recent development of IT technology, studies have been conducted to predict the occurrence of infectious diseases through web data, and most of the studies we have researched have been using single Web data to predict diseases. However, disease forecasting through a single Web data has the disadvantage of having difficulty collecting large amounts of learning data and making accurate predictions through models for recent outbreaks such as "COVID-19". Thus, we would like to demonstrate through experiments that models that use multiple Web data to predict the occurrence of infectious diseases through LSTM models are more accurate than those that use single Web data and suggest models suitable for predicting infectious diseases. In this experiment, we predicted the occurrence of "Malaria" and "Epidemic-parotitis" using a single web data model and the model we propose. A total of 104 weeks of NEWS, SNS, and search query data were collected, of which 75 weeks were used as learning data and 29 weeks were used as verification data. In the experiment we predicted verification data using our proposed model and single web data, Pearson correlation coefficient for the predicted results of our proposed model showed the highest similarity at 0.94, 0.86, and RMSE was also the lowest at 0.19, 0.07.

• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.410-417
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• 2010

Various functional foods, marketing health and functional effects, have been distributed in the market. These products, being in forms of foods, tablets, and capsules, are likely to be mistaken as drugs. In addition, non-experts may sell these as foods, or use these for therapy. Efforts for creating health food regulations or building regulatory system for improving the current status of functional foods have been made, but these have not been communicated to consumers yet. As a result, problems of circulating functional foods for therapy or adding illegal medical to such products have persisted, which has become worse by internet media. The cause of this problem can be categorized into (1) product itself and (2) its use, but in either case, one possible cause is lack of communications with consumers. Potential problems that can be caused by functional foods include illegal substances, hazardous substances, allergic reactions, considerations when administered to patients, drug interactions, ingredients with purity or concentrations too low to be detected, products with metabolic activations, health risks from over- or under-dose of vitamin and minerals, and products with alkaloids. (Journal of Health Science, 56, Supplement (2010)). The reason why side effects related to functional foods have been increasing is that under-qualified functional food companies are exaggerating the functionality for marketing purposes. KFDA has been informing consumers, through its web pages, to address the above mentioned issues related to functional foods, but there still is room for improvement, to promote proper use of functional foods and avoid drug interactions. Specifically, to address these issues, institutionalizing to collect information on approved products and their side effects, settling reevaluation systems, and standardizing preclinical tests and clinical tests are becoming urgent. Also to provide crucial information, unified database systems, seamlessly aggregating heterogeneous data in different domains, with user interfaces enabling effective one-stop search, are crucial.

• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.319-325
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• 2020

Widespread consumption of fresh-cut vegetables without cooking results in ingestion of major foodborne pathogens including Bacillus cereus. In this study, we aimed to develop a method to rapidly detect B. cereus in fresh-cut vegetables by combining commercial PCR analysis with enrichment of the pathogenic levels. A mixture of B. cereus strains (KCTC1013, KCTC1014, KCTC1092, KCTC1094, and KCTC3624) was inoculated on the surface of fresh-cut cabbage lettuce (20 g) and baby leafy vegetables (10 g) to concentration 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 log CFU/g. Eighty milliliters of TSB with 0.15% polymyxin B was used for cabbage lettuce, and 90 mL of medium was used for baby leafy vegetables and incubated at 42℃ for 0, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 h. One milliliter of the enriched media was plated on mannitol-egg yolk-polymyxin agar for quantification, and another 1 mL was used for DNA extraction for PCR analysis. Additionally, the minimum number of sub-samples to be tested from a pack of fresh-cut vegetable samples was determined using 5 sub-samples. The results from this study showed that for detecting B. cereus in fresh-cut cabbage lettuce, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 h enrichment were required to at least detect 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 log CFU/g of B. cereus, respectively. B. cereus in fresh-cut baby leafy vegetables could be detected after 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 h of enrichment at 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 log CFU/g, respectively, using a combination of enrichment and PCR analysis. To determine if a pack of fresh-cut vegetable is positive, the minimum number of sub-samples should be 3. These results can be used to develop a rapid detection method to semi-quantify B. cereus in fresh-cut vegetable samples combining enrichment and PCR.

• Food Science of Animal Resources
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.580-586
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• 2008

Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) is a mixture of positional and geometric isomers of linoleic acid with conjugated double bonds. These conjugated dienes were found to be responsible for many biological properties related to health. The objective of this study was to evaluate the production of cis-9, trans-11 CLA by Lactobacillus acidophilus isolated from breast-fed infants. Nine different cultures were tested for their ability to produce cis-9, trans-11 CLA from free linoleic acid in MRS broth and 8% reconstituted skim milk medium supplemented with linoleic acid at $37^{\circ}C$ for 48 hr. cis-9, trans-11 CLA was not detected or detected in very small amount when cell pellets of strains grown in MRS broth and 8% reconstituted skim milk supplemented with linoleic acid of $200{\mu}g/mL$. However, free cis-9, trans-11 CLA was produced in both media. It appeared that 8% reconstituted skim milk produced more cis-9, trans-11 CLA than MRS broth. L. acidophilus NB 203 and NB 209 produced more cis-9, trans-11 CLA than other tested cultures. The inhibitory effects of supplemented linoleic acid on the growth of L. acidophilus NB 203 and NB 209 were not detected up to $3,000{\mu}g/mL$ linoleic acid addition during the growth at $37^{\circ}C$ for 48 h. The production of cis-9, trans-11 CLA by these two L. acidophilus strains increased in the logarithmic growth phase until 24 hr incubation. Under this experimental condition, the best yield of CLA isomers for L. acidophilus NB 203 and NB 209 could be obtained from medium supplemented with $500{\mu}g/mL$ linoleic acid at $37^{\circ}C$ after 24 hr of incubation. These results indicate that the use of lactic acid bacteria producing free CLA in fermented dairy products may have potential health or nutritional benefits.