• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.1063-1066
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• 2016

Longan (Dimocarpus longan Lour.) has been used as a traditional oriental medicine and possesses a number of physiological activities. In this study, we used cell-based herbal extract screening to identify longan fruit extract (LFE) as an activator of osteoblast differentiation. LFE up-regulated alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity, induced mineralization, and activated Runx2 gene expression in MC3T3-E1 cells. Furthermore, treatment of MC3T3-E1 cells with LFE promoted the phosphorylation of extracellular signal-regulated kinase1/2 (Erk1/2); however, abrogation of Erk1/2 activation with PD98059 resulted in down-regulation of the phospho-SMAD1/5/8 and Runx2 levels, which in turn reduced the ALP activity. Our findings suggest that LFE exerts its osteogenic activity through activation of the ERK signaling pathway and may have potential as an herbal therapeutic or a preventive agent for the treatment of osteoporosis.

• Proceedings of the KOSOMBE Conference
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• v.1996 no.11
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• pp.243-246
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• 1996

This study was peformed to characterize the physiological signal prior to develop an algorithm which quantifies EEGs evoked by tactile stimulation. The experiment was devised with four experimental conditions, which were control and two levels of pressures in tactile sensation. Twenty subjects were used to obtain EEGs while applying tactile stimulation using two types of textiles, soft towel and sand paper, to the right hand of each subject. EEGs were acquired for 20 seconds, and each trial was repeated five times randomly at the different levels of stimulus intensities. The index, $S_{n}$, was obtained by calculating the ratio of energy distribution in the time-frequency plot for each scored psychological state of the subject. The results showed that dominant aspects of the EEG signals have their maximal frequencies concentrated at a lower ranges for the resting and pleasant state, while the spectral energies were distributed to higher frequency ranges when subjects experience an unpleasant emotion.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.1159-1165
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• 2011

Telemetry techniques of rats have been used for assessing safety pharmacology of drugs and chemicals. Biological signals including blood pressure and heart rate measured under anesthesia were significantly different from those obtained under normal conditions. The stress of restraint in awake animals can also affect the accuracy of physiological evaluation. This paper details the surgery required to allow key cardiovascular parameters to be determined. The telemetric measurement of cardiovascular parameters such as blood pressure, heart rate, electrocardiograph(ECG) established. We carried out the continuous monitoring of cardiovascular parameters using the telemetry system in F344 rats. During the measurement, no significant changes were observed in the heart rate and blood pressure. ECG signals and body temperature were also constant during the measurement of biological signals. With the results of this study, we conclude that this telemetry system can be applied usefully for the assesment of biological parameters in the rats.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.65 no.7
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• pp.1252-1256
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• 2016

Internet of Things(IoT)-devices are now expanding inter-connecting networking technologies to invent healthcare monitoring system especially for assessing physiological conditions of the chronically-ill patients those with cardiovascular diseases. Hence, IoT system is expected to be utilized for home healthcare by dedicating the original usage of IoT devices to collect the biomedical data such as electrocardiogram(ECG) and photoplethysmography(PPG) signal. The aim of this work is to implement health monitoring system by integrating IoT devices with Raspberry-pi components to measure and analyze ECG and the multi-channel PPG signals. The acquired data and fiducial features from our system can be transmitted to mobile devices via wireless networking technology to support the concept of tele-monitoring services based on IoT devices.

• Journal of Physiology & Pathology in Korean Medicine
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.501-507
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• 2005

Shikonin is a chemically characterized component of traditional herbal medicine, the root of Lithospermum erythrorhizon and has been shown to possess antitumor activities. Here we investigated anticancer potential of shikonin and its possible mechanism of action in LLC cells. Shikonin inhibited the proliferation of LLC cells in a concentration-dependent manner. It was also demonstrated that shikonin induced apoptosis in LLC cells by Annexin V staining and TUNEL staining analysis. Shikonin treatment was caused that decrease of Bcl-2, activation of caspases and cleavage of PARP. And shikonin also induced that the activation of mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs), such as extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK), c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) and p38. Interestingly, the cell proliferation inhibition induced by shikonin was recovered by specific inhibitors of JNK and p38 but the inhibitor of MEK, the upstream kinase of ERK, did not recover. Additionally, shikonin administration at doses of 5 mg/kg in C57BL/6 mice strongly inhibited the primary tumor growth of LLC. Taken together, these results suggest that shikonin may suppress LLC cell proliferation by inducing an apoptotic process via activation of caspases and MAPKs

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.346-351
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• 2012

Cells show various stress signs when they are challenged with severe physiological problems. Majority of such cellular stresses are conveyed to endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and unfolded protein response (UPR) serves as typical defense mechanism against ER stress. This study investigated an interaction between ER stress agents using macropage cell line Raw 264.7. When activated by lipopolysaccharide (LPS), the cell lines showed typical indicators of ER stress. Along with molecular chaperones, the activation process leads to the production of additional inflammatory mediators. Following activation, the macrophage cell line was further treated with TUN and characterized in terms of chaperone expression and cytokine secretion. When treated with TUN, the activated macrophage cell leads to increased secretion of IL-6 although expression of ER stress markers, GRP94 and GRP78 increased. The secretion of cytokines continued until the addition of BFA which inhibits protein targeting from ER to Golgi. However, secretion of cytokines was ceased upon dual treatments with BFA and TG. This result strongly implies that cells may differently deal with various polypeptides depending on the urgency in cellular function under ER stress. Considering IL-6 is one of the most important signal molecules in macrophage, the molecule might be able to circumvent ER stress and UPR to reach its targeting site.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.25-33
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• 2020

Several recent studies have reported that reactive oxygen species (ROS), superoxide anion and hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂), play important roles in various cellular signaling networks. NADPH oxidase (Nox) isozymes have been shown to mediate receptor-mediated ROS generation for physiological signaling processes involved in cell growth, differentiation, apoptosis, and fibrosis. Detectable intracellular levels of ROS can be induced by the electron leakage from mitochondrial respiratory chain as well as by activation of cytochrome p450, glucose oxidase and xanthine oxidase, leading to oxidative stress. The up-regulation and the hyper-activation of NADPH oxidases (Nox) also likely contribute to oxidative stress in pathophysiologic stages. Elevation of the renal ROS level through hyperglycemia-mediated Nox activation results in the oxidative stress which induces a damage to kidney tissues, causing to diabetic nephropathy (DN). Nox inhibitors are currently being developed as the therapeutics of DN. In this review, we summarize Nox-mediated ROS generation and development of Nox inhibitors for therapeutics of DN treatment.

• Journal of Plant Biology
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.295-300
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• 1996

The physiological effects of oligogalacturonic acid (OGA:D. P. 6-7), a product of acid hydrolysis of polygalacturonic acid (PGA), on ethylene biosynthesis in mung bean (Vigna radiata W.) hypocotyl segments was studied. Among PGA, OGA and monogalacturomic acid (MGA), only OGA stimulated ethylene production in mung bean hypocotyl segments, and the most effective concentraton of OGA was 50$\mu\textrm{g}$/mL. Time course data indicated that this stimulatiion effect of OGA appeared after 90 min incubation period and continued until 24 h. When indol-3-acetic acid (IAA) and 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid (ACC) were treated with OGA to investigate the mechanism of OGA on ethylene production, they did not show synergistic effects on ethylene production. The stimulation of ethylene production by OGA was due to the increase of in vivo ACC synthase activity, but OGA treatment had no effect of in vivo ACC oxidase activity. The effect of aminoethoxy vinyl glycine (AVG) and Co2+, the inhibitor of ethylene synthesis, was siminished a little by the OGA, but the treatment of Ca2+, known to increase ACC, with OGA did not increase the ethylene production, this effect seems to be specific for Ca2+ because other divalent cation, Mg2+, did not show the inhibition of OGA-indyuced ethylene production. It is possible that the OGA adopts a different signal transduction pathway to the ethylene bioxynthesis.

• Journal of Multimedia Information System
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 2021

Heart Rate is a crucial physiological parameter that provides basic information about the state of the human body in the cardiovascular system, as well as in medical diagnostics and fitness assessments. At present day, it has been demonstrated that facial video-based photoplethysmographic signal captured using a low-cost RGB camera is possible to retrieve remote heart rate. Traditional heart rate measurement is mostly obtained by direct contact with the human body, therefore, it can result inconvenient for long-term measurement due to the discomfort that it causes to the subject. In this paper, we propose a non-contact-based remote heart rate measuring approach of the subject which depends on the color intensity variation of the subject's facial skin. The proposed method is applied in two regions of the subject's face, forehead and cheeks. For this, three different algorithms are used to measure the heart rate. i.e., Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), Independent Component Analysis (ICA) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The average accuracy for the three algorithms utilizing the proposed method was 89.25% in both regions. It is also noteworthy that the FastICA algorithm showed a higher average accuracy of more than 92% in both regions. The proposed method obtained 1.94% higher average accuracy than the traditional method based on average color value.

• Journal of Physiology & Pathology in Korean Medicine
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.177-184
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• 2021

The root bark of Morus alba L. (MA) used in traditional oriental medicine for the treatment of pulmonary diseases exerts various pharmacological activities including anticancer effects. In the current study, we investigated the effects of MA on the migration and invasion of colorectal carcinoma cells. Results from a transwell assay showed that the methylene chloride extract of MA (MEMA) suppressed the migration and invasion of HCT116 human colorectal carcinoma cells in a concentration-dependent manner. MEMA reduced both mRNA and protein levels of matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-9, but did not suppress the expression of MMP-2 in HCT116 cells. As a molecular mechanism, MEMA inhibited the phosphorylation of mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs), including ERK, JNK and p38, in a dose-dependent manner. In addition, MEMA dephosphorylated both Src and signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) in HCT116 cells. Taken together, we demonstrate that MEMA suppressed the migration and invasion capacity of HCT116 human colorectal cancer cells by downregulation of MMP-9 and inactivation of both MAPKs and Src/STAT3 signaling pathway.