• Journal of Microbiology
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.277-283
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• 1997

Promoters inducible by paraquat, a superocide-generating agent, were isolated from Escherichia coli using a promoter-probing plasmid pRS415 with promoterless lacA gene. Twenty one promoters induced by paraquat were selected and further characterized. From sequence analysis, thirteen of the promoters were mapped to their specific loci on the Escherichia coli chromosome. Several promoters were mapped to the upstream of known genes such as usgl, katG, and mglB, whose relationships with superoxide response have not been previously reported. Other promoters were mapped to the upstream region of unknown open reading frames. Downstream of HC 96 promoter are uncharacterized ORFs whose sequences are homologous to ABC-transporter subunits. Downstream of HC84 promoter is an ORF encoding a transcriptional regulator-like protein, which contains a LysR family-specific HTH (helix-turn-helix) DNA bindign motif. We investigated whether these promoters belong to the soxRS regulon. All promoters except HC96 were found to belong to the soxRS regulon. The HC96 promoter was significantly induced by paraquat in the soxRS deletion mutant strain. The basal transcription level of three promoters (HE43, HC71, HD94) significantly increased at the stationary phase, implying that they are regulated by RpoS. However, paraquat inducibility of all promoters disappeared in the stationary phase, suggesting that SoxRS regulatory system is active only in rapidly growing cells.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.1021-1026
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• 2003

Numerous secreted and cell-associated virulence factors have been proposed to account for the fulminating and destructive nature of Vibrio vulnificus infections. Among the putative virulence factors are an elastase, elastolytic protease, and a cytolytic hemolysin. Effects of the elastase on the hemolysin were assessed by evaluating changes of hemolytic activities either in the presence or absence of the protease. Although hemolytic activity in the culture supernatant was lowered by the purified elastase added in vitro, the cellular level of hemolytic activity was unaffected by the mutation of vvpE encoding the elastase. Growth kinetic studies revealed that hemolysin reached its maximum level in the exponential phase of growth, and the elastase appeared at the onset of the stationary phase. These results have provided insight into the regulation of virulence factors: temporally coordinate regulation of virulence factors is essential for the overall success of the pathogen during pathogenesis.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.1670-1683
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• 2017

Mitotic event recognition is a crucial and challenging task in biomedical applications. In this paper, we introduce the slow feature analysis and propose a fully-automated mitotic event recognition method for cell populations imaged with time-lapse phase contrast microscopy. The method includes three steps. First, a candidate sequence extraction method is utilized to exclude most of the sequences not containing mitosis. Next, slow feature is learned from the candidate sequences using slow feature analysis. Finally, a hidden conditional random field (HCRF) model is applied for the classification of the sequences. We use a supervised SFA learning strategy to learn the slow feature function because the strategy brings image content and discriminative information together to get a better encoding. Besides, the HCRF model is more suitable to describe the temporal structure of image sequences than nonsequential SVM approaches. In our experiment, the proposed recognition method achieved 0.93 area under curve (AUC) and 91% accuracy on a very challenging phase contrast microscopy dataset named C2C12.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.103-111
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• 2013

Traditionally it has been assumed that written abilities are completely dependent on phonology. Therefore spoken and written language skills in aphasic patients have been known to exhibit similar types of impairment. However, a number of latest studies have reported the findings that support the orthographic autonomy hypothesis. The purpose of this study was to examine whether fluent aphasic patients have discrepancy between speaking and writing skills, thereby identifying whether the two skills are realized through independent processes. To this end, this study compared the K-FAST speaking and writing tasks of 30 aphasia patients. In addition, 16 aphasia patients, who were capable of producing sentences not only in speaking but also in writing, were compared in their performances at each phase of the sentence production process. As a result, the subjects exhibited different performances between speaking and writing, along with statistically significant differences between the two language skills at positional and phonological encoding phases of the sentence production process. Therefore, the study's results suggest that written language is more likely to be produced via independent routes without the mediation of the process of spoken language production, beginning from a certain phase of the sentence production process.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.81-88
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• 2015

This study describes a novel strategy to regulate the metabolic flux for lactic acid production in Lactobacillus casei. The ldhL gene encoding _L-lactate dehydrogenase (L-LDH) was overexpressed in L. casei, and a two-stage oxygen supply strategy (TOS) that maintained a medium oxygen supply level during the early fermentation phase, and a low oxygen supply level in the later phase was carried out. As a consequence, a maximum L-LDH activity of 95.6 U/ml was obtained in the recombinant strain, which was over 4-fold higher than that of the initial strain. Under the TOS for L. casei (pMG-ldhL), the maximum lactic acid concentration of 159.6 g/l was obtained in 36 h, corresponding to a 62.8% increase. The results presented here provide a novel way to regulate the metabolic flux of L. casei for lactic acid production in different fermentation stages, which is available to enhance organic acid production in other strains.

• Journal of Magnetics
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.422-427
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• 2013

The aim of this study was to investigate effects of the number of acquisitions (NEX) on signal-to-noise (SNR) and artifacts in SENSE parallel imaging of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). 3.0T MR System, 8 Channel sensitivity encoding (SENSE) head coils were used along with an in-vivo phantom. Reference sequence of 3D fast field echo (FFE) was consisted of NEX values of 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12. The T2 turbo spin echo (TSE) sequence used for exams achieved SENSE factors of 1.2, 1.5, 1.8, 2.0, 2.2, 2.5, 2.8, 3.0, 3.2, 3.5, 3.8 and 4.0. Exams were conducted five times for each SENSE factor to measure signal intensity of the object, the posterior phase-encode direction and frequency direction. And SNR was calculated using mean values. SENSE artifacts were identified as background signal intensity in the phase-encoded direction using MRIcro. It was found that SNR increased but SENSE artifacts reduced with NEX of 4, 8 and 12 when the NEX increased in reference scan. It is therefore concluded that image quality can be improved with NEX of 4, 8 and 12 for reference scanning.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.19-26
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• 1993

Magnetic Resonance Image represents three-dimensional diagnostic imaging technique using both nuclear magnetic resonance phenomenon and computer. Compared with computed tomography (CT), MRI have advantages harmless to patient's body, three-dimensional image with high resolution and disadvantages long data acquisition time because of long T1 relaxation time, relatively low signal to noise ratio, high cost of setting, also. As physiologic motion of tissue results in motion ghost in MRI, high 2.0Tesla make improve low signal to noise ratio. This study have aim to improve image quality with controling motion ghost of tissue. Supposing a moving pixel in constant frequency, one pixel make two ghosts which are same size and different anti-phase. So, this study will show adjust parameter on locational control of motion ghost. Author made moving phantom replaced by respiratory movement of human, researched change of motion frequency, FOV by location shift, and them decided optimal FOV (field of view). The results are as follows: 1. The frequency content of the motion determines how far the image always appear in phase-encoding direction, the morphology of the ghost image is characteristic of the direction of the motion and its amplitude. 2. Double FOV of fixed signal object for locational control of motion ghost is recommended. Decreasement of spatial resolution by increasing FOV can compensate on increasing of matrix in spite of scan time increasement.

• Journal of Microbiology
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• v.43 no.5
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• pp.398-405
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• 2005

Polyamines such as putrescine are small, ubiquitous polycationic molecules that are required for optimal growth of eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells. These molecules have diverse effects on cell physiology and their intracellular content is regulated by de novo synthesis and uptake from the environment. The studies presented here examined the structure of a putative polyamine transporter (Pot) operon in Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcus) and growth of pneumococci in medium containing putrescine substituted for choline. RT-PCR experiments demonstrated that the four genes encoding the Pot system are co-transcribed with murB, a gene involved in an intermediary step of peptidoglycan synthesis. Pneumococci grown in chemically-defined media (CDM) containing putrescine without choline enter logarithmic phase growth after 36-48 hs. However, culture density at stationary phase eventually reaches that of choline-containing medium. Cells grown in CDM-putrescine formed abnormally elongated chains in which the daughter cells failed to separate and the choline-binding protein PspA was no longer cell-associated. Experiments with CDM containing radiolabeled putrescine demonstrated that pneumococci concentrate this polyamine in cell walls. These data suggest that pneumococci can replicate without choline if putrescine is available and this polyamine may substitute for aminoalcohols in the cell wall teichoic acids.

• Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.163-170
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• 2021

Peptides are naturally occurring biological molecules that are found in all living organisms. These biologically active peptides play a key role in various biological processes. The aim of this study is the extraction and the purification of bioactive materials that induce relaxation of an apical muscle from the pyloric caeca of Patiria pectinifera. The acidified pyloric caeca extract was partially separated by the solid phase extraction using a stepwise gradient on Sep-Pak C18 cartridge. Among the fractions, materials eluted with 60% methanol/0.1% trifluoroacetic acid was put a thorough of a series of high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) steps to isolate a neuropeptide with relaxation activity. The purified compound was eluted at 28% acetonitrile in 0.1% trifluoroacetic acid with retention time of 25.8 min on the CAPCELL-PAK C18 reversed-phase column. To determine the molecular weight and the amino acid sequence of the purified peptide, LC-MS and Edman degradation method were used, respectively. The primary structure of the peptide was determined to be FGMGGAYDPLSAGFTD which corresponded to the amino acid sequence of a starfish myorelaxant peptide (SMP) isotype (SMPb) found in the cDNA sequence encoding SMPa and its isotypes. In this study, a muscle relaxant neuropeptide (SMPb) has been isolated from pyloric caeca of starfish P. pectinifera. This is the first report of SMPb isolation on the protein level from P. pectinifera.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.326-333
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• 2005

Phase-only encryption scheme using exclusive-OR rules in Fourier plane and a single path decryption system are presented. A zero-padded original image, multiplied by a random phase image, is Fourier transformed and its real-valued data is encrypted with key data by using XOR rules. A decryption is simply performed based on 2-1 setup with spatial filter by Fourier transform for multiplying phase-only encrypted data by phase-only key data, which are obtained by phase-encoding process, and spatial filtering for zero-order elimination in inverse-Fourier plane. Since the encryption process is peformed in Fourier plane, proposed encryption scheme is more tolerant to loss of key information by scratching or cutting than previous XOR encryption method in space domain. Compare with previous phase-visualization systems, due to the simple architecture without a reference wave, our system is basically robust to mechanical vibrations and fluctuations. Numerical simulations have confirmed the proposed technique as high-level encryption and simple decryption architecture.