• International Journal of Oral Biology
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.81-84
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• 2021

Salivary glands are exocrine glands that secrete saliva into the oral cavity, and secreted saliva plays essential roles in oral health. Therefore, maintaining the salivary glands in an intact state is required for proper production and secretion of saliva. To investigate a specific signaling pathway that might affect the maintenance of mouse submandibular gland (SMGs), RNA sequencing was performed. In SMGs, downregulated expression patterns of Rho-associated protein kinase (ROCK) signaling pathway-related genes, including Rhoa, Rhob, Rhoc, Rock1, and Rock2, were observed. Gene expression profiling analyses of these genes indicate that the ROCK signaling pathway is a potential signal for SMG maintenance.

• International Journal of Stem Cells
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.376-384
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• 2023

The Wnt 𝛽-catenin signaling pathway is a highly conserved mechanism that plays a critical role from embryonic development and adult stem cell homeostasis. However, dysregulation of the Wnt pathway has been implicated in various diseases, including cancer. Therefore, multiple layers of regulatory mechanisms tightly control the activation and suppression of the Wnt signal. The E3 ubiquitin ligases RNF43 and ZNRF3, which are known negative regulators of the Wnt pathway, are critical component of Wnt signaling regulation. These E3 ubiquitin ligases control Wnt signaling by targeting the Wnt receptor Frizzled to induce ubiquitination-mediated endo-lysosomal degradation, thus controlling the activation of the Wnt signaling pathway. We also discuss the regulatory mechanisms, interactors, and evolution of RNF43 and ZNRF3. This review article summarizes recent findings on RNF43 and ZNRF3 and their potential implications for the development of therapeutic strategies to target the Wnt signaling pathway in various diseases, including cancer.

• Development and Reproduction
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.179-185
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• 2016

The insulin-like growth factor (IGF) pathway is a key signal transduction pathway involved in cell proliferation, migration, and apoptosis. In dairy cows, IGF family proteins and binding receptors, including their intracellular binding partners, regulate mammary gland development. IGFs and IGF receptor interactions in mammary glands influence the early stages of mammogenesis, i.e., mammary ductal genesis until puberty. The IGF pathway includes three major components, IGFs (such as IGF-I, IGF-II, and insulin), their specific receptors, and their high-affinity binding partners (IGF binding proteins [IGFBPs]; i.e., IGFBP1-6), including specific proteases for each IGFBP. Additionally, IGFs and IGFBP interactions are critical for the bioactivities of various intracellular mechanisms, including cell proliferation, migration, and apoptosis. Notably, the interactions between IGFs and IGFBPs in the IGF pathway have been difficult to characterize during specific stages of bovine mammary gland development. In this review, we aim to describe the role of the interaction between IGFs and IGFBPs in overall mammary gland development in dairy cows.

• Archives of Plastic Surgery
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• v.34 no.6
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• pp.713-718
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• 2007

Purpose: The aim of this study is to develop and apply the critical pathway to the orbital wall fracture patients and to elucidate its effect. Methods: Critical pathway(CP) sheet and questionnaire were developed by a team approach. Critical pathway was applied to 7 orbital wall fracture patients (CP group) from April 2006 to September 2006. Length of hospitalization and cost for hospitalization of CP group were compared to those of the 10 patients who had same disease entities and treated by conventional regimen(control group). Results: Length of hospitalization in the CP group (7.20 day) were insignificantly shorter than that of control group(8.71 day). Mean cost for hospitalization of the CP group(776,398 won) were insignificantly lower than that of control group(1,028,531 won). The patients satisfaction for the explanation regarding operation procedure, therapeutic operation fee, length of hospitalization and medical personnel were all affirmative. Conclusion: Critical pathway that we developed for orbital wall fracture definitely improved the quality of treatment. Furthermore, other critical pathways should be developed for another facial trauma patients.

• The Journal of Korean Physical Therapy
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.77-82
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• 2010

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to compare the pathway of COP and plantar foot pressure and to determine the correlation between plantar regions during the ascending and descending of a ramp. Methods: Fifteen healthy adults who had no musculoskeletal problems participated in our study. They were asked to walk on a level surface and on an ascending and descending ramp in their bare feet. Pathway of COP and plantar foot pressures were recorded using the Matscan system (Tekscan, Boston, USA). For pressure measurements, the plantar foot surface was divided into seven regions: two toe regions, three forefoot regions, a midfoot region, and a heel region. To determine whether there was a statistically significant difference between pathway of COP and plantar foot pressures during walking, we used repeated measuremes ANOVA. Results: In comparison to results for a level walking, pathway of COP while ascending a ramp had a tendency to be shifted medially in the forefoot and became longer till the big toe. Pathway of COP while descending a ramp also was shifted medially, but ended in the forefoot. Plantar foot pressure of the second and third metatarsal head and the fourth and fifth metatarsal heads was significantly decreased while descending the ramp. Conclusion: These results indicated that plantar foot pressure is changed while ascending and descending a ramp and demonstrated that ramp walking can affect the structure and function of the foot. Therefore, gait environment is associated with significant changes in foot characteristics, which contribute to altered plantar loading patterns during gait.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.219-240
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• 2009

Since NF-${\kappa}B$ has been identified as a transcription factor associated with immune cell activation, groups of researchers have dedicated to reveal detailed mechanisms of nuclear factor of ${\kappa}B$ (NF-${\kappa}B$) in inflammatory signaling for decades. The various molecular components of NF-${\kappa}B$ transcription factor pathway have been being evaluated as important therapeutic targets due to their roles in diverse human diseases including inflammation, cystic fibrosis, sepsis, rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, atherosclerosis, ischemic injury, myocardial infarction, osteoporosis, transplantation rejection, and neurodegeneration. With regards to new drugs directly or indirectly modulating the NF-${\kappa}B$ pathway, FDA recently approved a proteasome inhibitor bortezomib for the treatment of multiple myeloma. Many pharmaceutical companies have been trying to develop new drugs to inhibit various kinases in the NF-${\kappa}B$ signaling pathway for many therapeutic applications. However, a gene knock-out study for $IKK{\beta}$ in the NF-${\kappa}B$ pathway has given rise to controversies associated with efficacy as therapeutics. Mice lacking hepatocyte $IKK{\beta}$ accelerated cancer instead of preventing progress of cancer. However, it is clear that pharmacological inhibition of $IKK{\beta}$ appears to be beneficial to reduce HCC. This article will update issues of the NF-${\kappa}B$ pathway and inhibitors regulating this pathway.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.880-886
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• 2015

Bacterial heme was produced from a genetic-engineered Escherichia coli via the porphyrin pathway and it was useful as an iron resource for animal feed. The amount of the E. coli-synthesized heme, however, was only few milligrams in a culture broth and it was not enough for industrial applications. To analyze heme biosynthetic pathways, an engineered E. coli artificially overexpressing ALA synthase (hemA from Rhodobacter sphaeroides) and pantothenate kinase (coaA gene from self geneome) was constructed as a bacterial heme-producing strain, and both the transcription levels of pathway genes and the intermediates concentrations were determined from batch and continuous cultures. Transcription levels of the pathway genes were not significantly changed among the tested conditions. Intracellular intermediate concentrations indicated that aminolevulinic acid (ALA) and coenzyme A (CoA) were enhanced by the hemA-coaA co-expression. Intracellular coproporphyrinogen I and protoporphyrin IX accumulation suggested that the bottleneck steps in the heme biosynthetic pathway could be the spontaneous conversion of HMB to coproporphyrinogen I and the limited conversion of protoporphyrin IX to heme, respectively. A strategy to increase the conversion of ALA to heme is discussed based on the results.

• Proceedings of the Zoological Society Korea Conference
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• 1995.10b
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• pp.82-82
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• 1995

Regulation of enzyme synthesis by transcriptional and translational control systems provides rather stable adaptation to change of amino acid level in the growth medium, while manipulation of enzyme activity through endproduct feedback inhibition represents rather short-term and reversible ways of adjusting metabolic fluctuation of amino acid level. Various control mechanisms interplay to regulate genes encoding enzymes for amino acid biosynthesis in the yeast, Sacchromyces cerevisiae. When amino acids are in short supply, genes under a cross-pathway regulatory mechanism Or general amino acid control (general control) increase their action, in which Gcn4p is the major positive regulator of gene expression. When cells are cultured in minimal medium, basal level expression is also regulated by supplementary control elements, where inorganic phosphate level is additionally involved. Most of amino acid biosynthetic genes are also regulated by the level of endproduct of the pathway. This pathway-specific regulatory mechanism is called specific amino acid control (specific controD, under which gene expression is reduced when endproduct is present in the medium. Derepression of a gene through general control can be usually overridden by repression through specific control, where the endproduct level of that particular pathway is high and not limiting. In this presentation, regulatory factors for basal level expression and general control of yeast amino acid biosynthesis will be discussed, m addition to pathway-specific repression patterns and interaction between CrOSS- and specific-control mechanisms. Preliminary results are also presented from the investigation of the cloned genes in the threonine biosynthetic pathway of the yeast. yeast.

• Genomics & Informatics
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.118-124
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• 2006

For the direct understanding of flow, pathway data are usually represented as directed graphs in biological journals and texts. Databases of metabolic pathways or signal transduction pathways inevitably contain these kinds of graphs to show the flow. KEGG, one of the representative pathway databases, uses the manually drawn figure which can not be easily maintained. Graph layout algorithms are applied for visualizing metabolic pathways in some databases, such as EcoCyc. Although these can express any changes of data in the real time, it exponentially increases the edge crossings according to the increase of nodes. For the understanding of genome scale flow of metabolism, it is very important to reduce the unnecessary edge crossings which exist in the automatic graph layout. We propose a metabolic pathway drawing algorithm for reducing the number of edge crossings by considering the fact that metabolic pathway graph is scale-free network. The experimental results show that the number of edge crossings is reduced about $37{\sim}40%$ by the consideration of scale-free network in contrast with non-considering scale-free network. And also we found that the increase of nodes do not always mean that there is an increase of edge crossings.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.1934-1938
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• 2012

The reaction mechanism between cyclopropenylidene and formaldehyde has been systematically investigated employing the MP2/6-311+$G^*$ level of theory to better understand the cyclopropenylidene reactivity with carbonyl compound. Geometry optimization, vibrational analysis, and energy property for the involved stationary points on the potential energy surface have been calculated. Energies of all the species are further corrected by the CCSD(T)/6-311+$G^*$ single-point calculations. It was found that one important reaction intermediate (INTa) has been located firstly $via$ a transition state (TSa). After that, the common intermediate (INTb) for the two pathways (1) and (2) has been formed $via$ TSb. At last, two different products possessing three- and four-membered ring characters have been obtained through two possible reaction pathways. In the reaction pathway (1), a three-membered ring alkyne compound has been obtained. As for the reaction pathway (2), it is the formation of the four-membered ring conjugated diene compound. The energy barrier of the ratedetermining step of pathway (1) is lower than that of the pathway (2), and the ultima product of pathway (2) is more stable than that of the pathway (1).