• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Agricultural Machinery Conference
• /
• 2017.04a
• /
• pp.107-107
• /
• 2017

3D bioprinting is a technology to produce complex tissue constructs through printing living cells with hydrogel in a layer-by-layer process. To produce more stable 3D cell-laden structures, various materials have been developed such as alginate, fibrin and gelatin. However, most of these hydrogels are chemically bound using crosslinkers which can cause some problems in cytotoxicity and cell viability. On the other hand, thermosensitive hydrogels are physically cross-linked by non-covalent interaction without crosslinker, facilitating stable cytotoxicity and cell viability. The examples of currently reported thermosensitive hydrogels are poly(ethylene glycol)/poly(propylene glycol)/poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG-PPG-PEG) and poly(ethylene glycol)/poly(lactic acid-co-glycolic acid) (PEG/PLGA). Chitosan, which have been widely used in tissue engineering due to its biocompatibility and osteoconductivity, can be used as thermosensitive hydrogels. However, despite the many advantages, chitosan hydrogel has not yet been used as a bioink. The purpose of this study was to develop a bioink by chitosan hydrogel for 3D bioprinting and to evaluate the suitability and potential ability of the developed chitosan hydrogel as a bioink. To prepare the chitosan hydrogel solution, ${\beta}-glycerolphosphate$ solution was added to the chitosan solution at the final pH ranged from 6.9 to 7.1. Gelation time decreased exponentially with increasing temperature. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) image showed that chitosan hydrogel had irregular porous structure. From the water soluble tetrazolium salt (WST) and live and dead assay data, it was proven that there was no significant cytotoxicity and that cells were well dispersed. The chitosan hydrogel was well printed under temperature-controlled condition, and cells were well laden inside gel. The cytotoxicity of laden cells was evaluated by live and dead assay. In conclusion, chitosan bioink can be a candidate for 3D bioprinting.

• Molecules and Cells
• /
• v.26 no.1
• /
• pp.61-66
• /
• 2008

Cyclic AMP receptor protein (CRP) is allosterically activated by cAMP and functions as a global transcription regulator in enteric bacteria. Structural information on CRP in the absence of cAMP (apo-CRP) is essential to fully understand its allosteric behavior. In this study we demonstrated interdomain interactions in apo-CRP, using a comparative thermodynamic approach to the intact protein and its isolated domains, which were prepared either by limited proteolysis or using recombinant DNA. Thermal denaturation of the intact apo-CRP, monitored by differential scanning calorimetry, revealed an apparently single cooperative transition with a slight asymmetry. Combined with circular dichroism and fluorescence analysis, the thermal denaturation of apo-CRP could be interpreted as a coupled process involving two individual transitions, each attributable to a structural domain. When isolated individually, both of the domains exhibited significantly altered thermal behavior, thus pointing to the existence of non-covalent interdomain interactions in the intact apo-CRP. These observations suggest that the allosteric conformational change of CRP upon binding to cAMP is achieved by perturbing or modifying pre-existing interdomain interactions. They also underline the effectiveness of a comparative approach using calorimetric and structural probes for studying the thermodynamics of a protein.

• Journal of Life Science
• /
• v.25 no.6
• /
• pp.631-637
• /
• 2015

Streptavidin, a protein produced by Streptomyces avidinii, strongly binds up to four molecules of vitamin H, d-biotin exhibiting the dissociation constant of about 10⁻¹⁵ M. This strong binding affinity has been applied for detection and characterization of numerous biological molecules suggesting expression and purification of functional streptavidin should be very useful for the application of this streptavidin-biotin interaction. To express a soluble streptavidin in Escherichia coli, We synthesized streptavidin genes and cloned into pET-22b plasmid, which uses T7 RNA polymerase/T7 promoter expression systems containing pelB leader for secretion into periplasmic space and six polyhistidine tags at C-terminus for purification of expressed proteins. Although streptavidin is toxic to Escherichia coli due to strong biotin binding property, streptavidin was expressed very sufficiently in a range of 10-20 mg/ml. In SDS-PAGE, the size of purified protein was shown as 17 kDa in denatured condition (boiling) and 68 kDa in native condition (without boiling) suggesting tetramerization of monomeric subunit by non-covalent association. Further analysis by size-exclusion chromatography supported streptavidin’s tetrameric structure as well. In addition, soluble streptavidin detected biotinylated proteins in westernblot indicating its functional activity to biotin. Taken these results together, it concluded that our simple expression system was able to show high yield, homotetrameric formation and biotin binding activity analogous to natural streptavidin.

• Clean Technology
• /
• v.27 no.2
• /
• pp.115-123
• /
• 2021

This study demonstrates a new method for the synthesis of organic-inorganic hybrid particles composed of an inorganic silica shell and organic core particles. The organic core particles are prepared with a uniform size using droplet-based microfluidic technology. In the process of preparing the organic core particles, uniform droplets are generated by independently controlling the flow rates of the dispersed phase containing photocurable resins and the continuous phase. After the generation of droplets in a microfluidic device, the droplets are photo-polymerized as particles by ultraviolet irradiation at the ends of microfluidic channels. The core particle is coated with a nano complex composed of polyallylamine hydrochloride (PAH) and phosphate ion (Pi) through strong non-covalent interactions such as hydrogen bonding and electrostatic interaction under optimized pH conditions. The polyamine nano complex rapidly induces the condensation reaction of silicic acid through the arranged amine groups of the main chain of PAH. Therefore, this method enabled the preparation of organic-inorganic hybrid particles coated with inorganic silica nanoparticles on the organic core. Finally, we demonstrated the synthesis of organic-inorganic hybrid particles in a short time under ambient and environmentally friendly conditions, and this is applicable to the production of organic-inorganic hybrid particles having various sizes and shapes.