• Animal Bioscience
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• v.34 no.8
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• pp.1321-1330
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• 2021

Objective: Transgenic hens hold a great promise to produce various valuable proteins. Through virus transduction into stage X embryo, the transgene expression under the control of constructed chicken ovalbumin promoters has been successfully achieved. However, a validation system that can evaluate differently developed ovalbumin promoters in in vitro, remains to be developed. Methods: In the present study, chicken oviduct epithelial cells (cOECs) were isolated from oviduct tissue and shortly cultured with keratinocyte complete medium supplemented with chicken serum. The isolated cells were characterized with immunofluorescence, western blot, and flow cytometry using oviduct-specific marker. Chicken mutated ovalbumin promoter (Mut-4.4-kb-pOV) was validated in these cells using luciferase reporter analysis. Results: The isolated cOECs revealed that the oviduct-specific marker, ovalbumin protein, was clearly detected by immunofluorescence, western blot, and flow cytometry analysis revealed that approximately 79.40% of the cells contained this protein. Also, luciferase reporter analysis showed that the constructed Mut-4.4-kb-pOV exhibited 7.1-fold (p<0.001) higher activity in the cOECs. Conclusion: Collectively, these results demonstrate the efficient isolation and characterization of cOECs and validate the activity of the constructed ovalbumin promoter in the cultured cOECs. The in vitro validation of the recombinant promoter activity in cOECs can facilitate the production of efficient transgenic chickens for potential use as bioreactors.

• Asian Spine Journal
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.998-1009
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• 2018

Study Design: Olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs) from rat olfactory mucosa were cultured, characterized, and transplanted into a rat model of spinal cord injury (SCI). Purpose: To evaluate different doses of OECs in a rat model of SCI. Overview of Literature: SCI causes permanent functional deficit because the central nervous system lacks the ability to perform spontaneous repair. Cell therapy strategies are being explored globally. The clinical use of human embryonic stem cell is hampered by ethical controversies. Alternatively, OECs are a promising cell source for neurotransplantation. This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of different doses of allogenic OEC transplantation in a rat model of SCI. Methods: OECs were cultured from the olfactory mucosa of Albino Wistar rats; these cells were characterized using immunohistochemistry and flow cytometry. Rats were divided into five groups (n=6 rats each). In each group, different dosage ($2{\times}10^5$, $5{\times}10^5$, $10{\times}10^5$, and >$10{\times}10^5$) of cultured cells were transplanted into experimentally injured spinal cords of rat models. However, in the SCI group, only DMEM (Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium) was injected. Rats were followed up upto 8 weeks post-transplantation. The outcome of transplantation was assessed using the Basso, Beattie, Bresnahan (BBB) scale; motor-evoked potential studies; and histological examination. Results: Cultured cells expressed 41% of p75NTR, a marker for OEC, and 35% of anti-fibronectin, a marker for olfactory nerve fibroblast. These cells also expressed $S100{\beta}$ and glial fibrillary acid protein of approximately 75% and 83%, respectively. All the transplanted groups showed promising BBB scores for hind-limb motor recovery compared with the SCI group (p<0.05). A motor-evoked potential study showed increased amplitude in all the treated groups compared with the SCI. Green fluorescent protein-labeled cells survived in the injured cord, suggesting their role in the transplantation-mediated repair. Transplantation of $5{\times}10^5$ cells showed the best motor outcomes among all the doses. Conclusions: OECs demonstrated a therapeutic effect in rat models with the potential for future clinical applications.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.719-738
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• 2010

The aim of this paper concerns with the nonlinear analysis of cable-stayed bridges including the vibration effect of cable stays. Two models for the cable stay system are built up in the study. One is the OECS (one element cable system) model in which one single element per cable stay is used and the other is MECS (multi-elements cable system) model, where multi-elements per cable stay are used. A finite element computation procedure has been set up for the nonlinear analysis of such kind of structures. For shape finding of the cable-stayed bridge with MECS model, an efficient computation procedure is presented by using the two-loop iteration method (equilibrium iteration and shape iteration) with help of the catenary function method to discretize each single cable stay. After the convergent initial shape of the bridge is found, further analysis can then be performed. The structural behaviors of cable-stayed bridges influenced by the cable lateral motion will be examined here detailedly, such as the static deflection, the natural frequencies and modes, and the dynamic responses induced by seismic loading. The results show that the MECS model offers the real shape of cable stays in the initial shape, and all the natural frequencies and modes of the bridge including global modes and local modes. The global mode of the bridge consists of coupled girder, tower and cable stays motion and is a coupled mode, while the local mode exhibits only the motion of cable stays and is uncoupled with girder and tower. The OECS model can only offers global mode of tower and girder without any motion of cable stays, because each cable stay is represented by a single straight cable (or truss) element. In the nonlinear seismic analysis, only the MECS model can offer the lateral displacement response of cable stays and the axial force variation in cable stays. The responses of towers and girders of the bridge determined by both OECS- and MECS-models have no great difference.

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.41 no.6
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• pp.582-590
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• 2018

Endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) and outgrowth endothelial cells (OECs) play a pivotal role in vascular regeneration in ischemic tissues; however, their therapeutic application in clinical settings is limited due to the low quality and quantity of patient-derived circulating EPCs. To solve this problem, we evaluated whether three priming small molecules (tauroursodeoxycholic acid, fucoidan, and oleuropein) could enhance the angiogenic potential of EPCs. Such enhancement would promote the cellular bioactivities and help to develop functionally improved EPC therapeutics for ischemic diseases by accelerating the priming effect of the defined physiological molecules. We found that preconditioning of each of the three small molecules significantly induced the differentiation potential of $CD34^+$ stem cells into EPC lineage cells. Notably, long-term priming of OECs with the three chemical cocktail (OEC-3C) increased the proliferation potential of EPCs via ERK activation. The migration, invasion, and tube-forming capacities were also significantly enhanced in OEC-3Cs compared with unprimed OECs. Further, the cell survival ratio was dramatically increased in OEC-3Cs against $H_2O_2$-induced oxidative stress via the augmented expression of Bcl-2, a pro-survival protein. In conclusion, we identified three small molecules for enhancing the bioactivities of ex vivo-expanded OECs for vascular repair. Long-term 3C priming might be a promising methodology for EPC-based therapy against ischemic diseases.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.08a
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• pp.70-70
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• 2013

As the costs of carbon-footprinetd fuels grow continuously and simultaneously atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration increases, solar fuels are receiving growing attention as alternative clean energy carriers. These fuels include molecular hydrogen and hydrogen peroxide produced from water, and hydrocarbons converted from carbon dioxide. For high efficiency solar fuel production, not only light absorbers (oxide semiconductors, Si, inorganic complexes, etc) should absorb most sunlight, but also charge separation and interfacial charge transfers need to occur efficiently. With this in mind, this talk will introduce the fundamentals of solar fuel production and artificial photosynthesis, and then discuss in detail on photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting and CO2 conversion. This talk largely divides into two section: PEC water oxidation and PEC CO2 reduction. The former is very important for proton-coupled electron transfer to CO2. For this oxidation, a variety of oxide semiconductors have been tested including TiO2, ZnO, WO3, BiVO4, and Fe2O3. Although they are essentially capable of oxidizing water into molecular oxygen, the efficiency is very low primarily because of high overpotentials and slow kinetics. This challenge has been overcome by coupling with oxygen evolving catalysts (OECs) and/or doping donor elements. In the latter, surface-modified p-Si electrodes are fabricated to absorb visible light and catalyze the CO2 reduction. For modification, metal nanoparticles are electrodeposited on the p-Si and their PEC performance is compared.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.43 no.5
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• pp.691-709
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• 2012

This paper provides a variety of viewpoints to illustrate the mechanism of the deck-stay interaction with the appropriate initial shapes of cable-stayed bridges. Based on the smooth and convergent bridge shapes obtained by the initial shape analysis, the one-element cable system (OECS) and multi-element cable system (MECS) models of the Kao Ping Hsi Bridge in Taiwan are developed to verify the applicability of the analytical model and numerical formulation from the field observations in the authors' previous work. For this purpose, the modal analysis of the two finite element models are conducted to calculate the natural frequency and normalized mode shape of the individual modes of the bridge. The modal coupling assessment is also performed to obtain the generalized mass ratios among the structural components for each mode of the bridge. The findings indicate that the coupled modes are attributed to the frequency loci veering and mode localization when the "pure" deck-tower frequency and the "pure" stay cable frequency approach one another, implying that the mode shapes of such coupled modes are simply different from those of the deck-tower system or stay cables alone. The distribution of the generalized mass ratios between the deck-tower system and stay cables are useful indices for quantitatively assessing the degree of coupling for each mode. These results are demonstrated to fully understand the mechanism of the deck-stay interaction with the appropriate initial shapes of cable-stayed bridges.