• 생명과학회지
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• 제17권1호
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• pp.18-23
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• 2007

신경세포에 특이적으로 발현되는 단백질인 Fe65는 두 개의 phosphotyrosine binding(PTB) 도메인을 가지고 있다. 두번째 PTB(PTB2)도메인은 아밀로이드 베타 전구 단백질(APP)의 세포질 도메인 조각(AICD)와 결합한다. 최근 연구 결과들은 AICD와 Fe65로 이루어진 결합체가 알츠하이머병에서 신경세포를 죽게 하는 유전자를 발현한다고 제시하고 있다. 따라서 Fe65와 AICD의 결합을 방해하는 화합물은 알츠하이머병을 치료하는데 후보물질이 될 수 있다. 하지만 AICD와 Fe65와 관련된 신호전달에 대한 분자적 기전은 잘 알려져 있지 않다. 이번 연구에서는 Fe65의 PTB2도메인을 baculovirus시스템에서 과발현시킨 결과를 보고한다. 세균 및 척추동물 세포를 이용한 시스템과 비교했을 때, baculovirus 시스템 이 훨씬 효과적 이 다는 것을 발견했다. 정제된 재조합 단백질을 이용하여 초기 결정을 얻었다. 결정을 이용하여 앞으로 밝힐 3차원 구조는 Fe65관련 신호전달체계에 대한 분자 기전 및 이에 대한 저해제 개발에 큰 도움을 줄 것이다.

• 한국치위생학회지
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• 제16권2호
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• pp.155-163
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• 2016

The purpose of the review article is to investigate the influence of periodontal diseases on preterm birth(PTB) and low birth weight(LBW). PTB and LBW are the main risk factors of infant mortality and a major public health problem. PTB is defined as delivery at less than 37 weeks and LBW is less than 2,500 grams. Over Approximately 60 percent of perinatal mortality results from PTB or LBW. Although the causes of PTB and LBW are not fully understood, infection is the leading cause of PTB and LBW. Periodontal diseases are serious disease burdens because they are caused by bacterial endotoxin, inflammatory reaction, and cytokine. The periodontal diseases are the predisposing factors of cerebrovascular and cardiovascular diseases including atherosclerosis. Over the past 15 years, previous studies revealed that periodontitis had adverse outcomes including PTB and LBW in pregnancy.

• Genomics & Informatics
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• 제21권3호
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• pp.29.1-29.9
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• 2023

Preterm birth (PTB), a pregnancy-related disease, is defined as a birth before 37 weeks of gestation. It is a major cause of maternal mortality and morbidity worldwide, and its incidence rate is steadily increasing. Various genetic factors can contribute to the etiology of PTB. Vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGFA) gene is an important angiogenic gene and its polymorphisms have been reported to be associated with PTB development. Therefore, we conducted a case-control study to evaluate the association between VEGFA rs699947, rs2010963, and rs3025039 polymorphisms and PTB in Korean women. A total of 271 subjects (116 patients with PTB and 155 women at ≥38 weeks of gestation) were analyzed in this study. The genotyping of VEGFA gene polymorphisms was performed using polymerase chain reaction- restriction fragment length polymorphism. No significant association between the patients with PTB and the control groups was confirmed. In the combination analysis, we found a significant association between PTB and VEGFA rs699947 CC-rs2010963 GG-rs3025039 CC combination (odds ratio, 3.77; 95% confidence interval, 1.091 to 13.032; p = 0.031). The VEGFA rs699947, rs2010963, and rs3025039 polymorphisms might have no genetic association with the pathogenesis of PTB in Korean women. However, the combination analysis indicates the possibility that VEGFA acts in PTB pathophysiology. Therefore, larger sample sets and replication studies are required to further elucidate our findings.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• 제31권10호
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• pp.1393-1400
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• 2021

Acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) fermentation by the anaerobic bacterium Clostridium acetobutylicum has been considered a promising process of industrial biofuel production. Phosphotransbutyrylase (phosphate butyryltransferase, PTB) plays a crucial role in butyrate metabolism by catalyzing the reversible conversion of butyryl-CoA into butyryl phosphate. Here, we report the crystal structure of PTB from the Clostridial host for ABE fermentation, C. acetobutylicum, (CaPTB) at a 2.9 Å resolution. The overall structure of the CaPTB monomer is quite similar to those of other acyltransferases, with some regional structural differences. The monomeric structure of CaPTB consists of two distinct domains, the N- and C-terminal domains. The active site cleft was formed at the interface between the two domains. Interestingly, the crystal structure of CaPTB contained eight molecules per asymmetric unit, forming an octamer, and the size-exclusion chromatography experiment also suggested that the enzyme exists as an octamer in solution. The structural analysis of CaPTB identifies the substrate binding mode of the enzyme and comparisons with other acyltransferase structures lead us to speculate that the enzyme undergoes a conformational change upon binding of its substrate.

• 한국산업보건학회지
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• 제33권2호
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• pp.134-144
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• 2023

Objectives: Active pulmonary tuberculosis (active PTB) is manifested in one of the complications of pneumoconiosis, but statistics are not available. The objective of the present study was to identify the incidence of active PTB among dusty workers who were diagnosed with pneumoconiosis by year. Methods: The present study was performed using the results of the Pneumoconiosis Examination Council's assessment from the Korea Workers' Compensation and Welfare Service (KCOMWEL) database between January 1, 1984, and December 31, 2017. Pneumoconiosis is defined as Category 1 or more. Active PTB was defined as a positive result for active PTB in the result of the Pneumoconiosis Examination Council's assessment. The annual incidence rate of pneumoconiosis and active PTB were analyzed by age standardization. Results: The number of retired dusty workers who received the health examination for work-related pneumoconiosis increased every year. However, the incidence of pneumoconiosis among retired dusty workers and active PTB among patients with pneumoconiosis decreased every year. Conclusions: To effectively manage pneumoconiosis and active PTB among patients with pneumoconiosis, the annual status of them in retired dusty workers who received the health examination for work-related pneumoconiosis was required.

• 한국미생물·생명공학회지
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• 제51권1호
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• pp.109-123
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• 2023

Preterm birth (PTB) is defined as giving birth prior to the 37th week of pregnancy and is a major cause of infant mortality. Studies have indicated that the vaginal microbiota's composition and its dysbiosis, particularly during pregnancy, may play a major role in PTB. While previous research work concentrated on well-studied microorganisms such as Lactobacillus, Prevotella, Gardnerella, various other microbes, and their significance in the vaginal microbiota's stability remain unknown. Moreover, current studies have focused primarily on the relative abundances of the microbes found, without considering their interactions with other members of the vaginal microbiota. In this work, we developed a novel computational approach and performed taxonomic classification of vaginal microbiota samples stratified longitudinally (Term/PTB) to observe compositional disparities and find underexamined microbes that may be contributing to PTB. Furthermore, we carried out a correlational analysis to build a microbial co-interaction network and investigated the functional implications of the genes present in both Term and PTB samples. The co-occurrence network revealed that Lactobacillus acts in solidarity to maintain the stability of the vaginal microbiota and did not have strong co-interactions with any of the other microbes. Similarly, microbes with strong interactions with Atopobium, a well-known marker microbe of PTB, were also observed. Additionally, several genes such as PTXA, FANCM, GPX, and DUSP were found to be playing an important role in the occurrence of PTB. This study provides a novel conceptual framework revealing distinct vaginal microbiota signatures that could be potential therapeutic targets for the prevention of PTB.

• 한국초전도학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국초전도학회 2003년도 High Temperature Superconductivity Vol.XIII
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• pp.45-45
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• 2003

• 대한의용생체공학회:의공학회지
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• 제38권1호
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• pp.25-31
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• 2017

Testing TB in chest X-ray images is a typical method to diagnose presence and magnitude of PTB lesion. However, the method has limitation due to inter-reader variability. Therefore, it is essential to overcome this drawback with automatic interpretation. In this study, we propose a novel method for detection of PTB using SegNet, which is a deep learning architecture for semantic pixel wise image labelling. SegNet is composed of a stack of encoders followed by a corresponding decoder stack which feeds into a soft-max classification layer. We modified parameters of SegNet to change the number of classes from 12 to 2 (TB or none-TB) and applied the architecture to automatically interpret chest radiographs. 552 chest X-ray images, provided by The Korean Institute of Tuberculosis, used for training and test and we constructed a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. As a consequence, the area under the curve (AUC) was 90.4% (95% CI:[85.1, 95.7]) with a classification accuracy of 84.3%. A sensitivity was 85.7% and specificity was 82.8% on 431 training images (TB 172, none-TB 259) and 121 test images (TB 63, none-TB 58). This results show that detecting PTB using SegNet is comparable to other PTB detection methods.

• 한국산업보건학회지
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• 제29권4호
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• pp.582-589
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• 2019

Objectives: Although active pulmonary tuberculosis(active PTB) is manifested as one of the complications of pneumoconiosis, attacks of active PTB among patients with pneumoconiosis is still unexplored. The objective of the present study was to identify the attack rate of active PTB among workers in dusty environments who were diagnosed with pneumoconiosis. Methods: The study was performed using the results of the Pneumoconiosis Examination Council's assessment from the Korea Workers' Compensation and Welfare Service(KCOMWEL) database between January 1, 1984 and December 31, 2017. Pneumoconiosis was defined as Category 1 or more in the radiological findings of pneumoconiosis. Active PTB was defined as a positive result for active PTB in the results of the Pneumoconiosis Examination Council's assessment. Results: A total of 37,946 workers in dusty environments who received a health examination for diagnosing pneumoconiosis between January 1, 1984 and December 31, 2017 were selected as study subjects. The attack rate of active TB among subjects who were diagnosed with pneumoconiosis and those who were diagnosed without pneumoconiosis were 8.5% and 1.4%, respectively. In the multivariate logistic analysis including age, sex, radiological findings, complications, male[odds ratio(OR), 2.0; 95% confidence interval(CI), 1.4-3.1] and pneumoconiosis(OR, 6.5; 95% CI, 5.7-7.4) were associated with an increased risk of developing active PTB. Conclusions: The present study determined that dusty workers who were diagnosed with pneumoconiosis had a high rate of active PTB compared to TB patients and patients who were diagnosed with silicosis. Therefore, in addition to silicosis, it is necessary to include pneumoconiosis among the high-risk groups for TB.

• Current Photovoltaic Research
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• 제5권3호
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• pp.69-74
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• 2017

Here we report the influence of thermal treatment on the performance of high efficiency polymer solar cells with the bulk heterojunction films of poly[4,8-bis(5-(2-ethylhexyl)thiophen-2-yl)benzo[1,2-b:4,5-b'] dithiophene-alt-3-fluorothieno[3,4-b]thiophene-2-carboxylate] (PTB7-Th) and [6,6]-phenyl $C_{71}$ butyric acid methyl ester ($PC_{71}BM$). The crystalline nanostructure of PTB7-Th:$PC_{71}BM$ layers, which were annealed at three different temperatures, was investigated by employing synchrotron radiation grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXD) technique. Results showed that the device performance was slightly reduced by thermal annealing at $50^{\circ}C$ but became significantly poor by thermal annealing at $100^{\circ}C$. The poor device performance by thermal annealing was attributed to the collapse in the crystalline nanostructure of PTB7-Th in the PTB7-Th:$PC_{71}BM$ layers as evidenced by the GIXD measurements that exhibited huge reduction in the intensity of PTB7-Th (100) peak even at $50^{\circ}C$.