• The Korean Journal of Food & Health Convergence
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.22-31
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• 2018

In this present work, the amounts of toxic elements were determined in the soft tissues of mollusks (Mytilus galloprovincialis and Rapana venosa) collected from Igneada shores of the Black Sea where suggested as Marine Protection Area (MPA). M. galloprovincialis accumulated the highest amounts of Cd in winter, while the highest amounts of Cd and Hg were detected in R. venosa in winter and autumn. The concentrations of toxic elements found in the soft tissues of mollusks varied for Cd: 0.07-0.14, Hg: 0.03-0.44 and Pb: 0.09-0.21 mg/g dry wt. The estimated levels of all non-essential metals in the present work were lower than the limits permitted by European Community Regulation (EU) and the Turkish Food Codex (TFC). The estimated weekly intakes (EWI) and daily intakes (EDI) of all the through consumption of these seafood by Turkish people in the Igneada coasts of the Black Sea were quite below the permissible tolerable weekly/daily intakes for 70 kg person (PTWI / PTDI) set by FAO/WHO. As results, it can be concluded that no hazard effects on people health would be raised at present from the consumption of these mollusks' species.

• Journal of Yeungnam Medical Science
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.105-115
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• 2011

Mercury is a toxic, persistent pollutant that bioaccumulates and biomagnifies through food webs. People are exposed to methyhnercruy mainly through their diet, especially through the consumption of freshwater and marine fish and of other animals that consume fish (e.g., marine mammals). All humans are exposed to low levels of mercury. Dietary patterns can increase exposure to a fish-eating population where the fish and seafood are contaminated with mercury. The primary toxicity targets of mercury and mercury compounds are the nervous system, kidneys, and cardiovascular system. It is generally accepted that developing organ systems are most sensitive to the toxic effects of mercury. The fetal-brain mercury levels appear to be significantly higher than the maternal-blood mercury levels, and the developing central nervous system of the fetus is currently regarded as the main system of concern as it demonstrates the greatest sensitivity. The subpopulation that may be at greater risk for mercury toxicity are those exposed to higher levels of methylmercury due to carnivorous fish, including sharks.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.27 no.10
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• pp.1753-1762
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• 2017

Sea cucumber (Apostichopus japonicus) is a popular seafood source in Asia, including South Korea, and its consumption has recently increased with recognition of its medicinal properties. However, because raw sea cucumber contains various microbes, its ingestion can cause foodborne illness. Therefore, analysis of the microbiota in the whole body of sea cucumber can extend our understanding of foodborne illness caused by microorganisms and help to better manage products. We collected 40 sea cucumbers from four different sites in August and November, which are known as the maximum production areas in Korea. The microbiota was analyzed by an Illumina MiSeq system, and bacterial amounts were quantified by real-time PCR. The diversity and bacterial amounts in sea cucumber were higher in August than in November. Alpha-, Beta-, and Gammaproteobacteria were common dominant classes in all samples. However, the microbiota composition differed according to sampling time and site. Staphylococcus warneri and Propionibacterium acnes were commonly detected potential pathogens in August and November samples, respectively. The effect of experimental Vibrio parahaemolyticus infection on the indigenous microbiota of sea cucumber was analyzed at different temperatures, revealing clear alterations of Psychrobacter and Moraxella; thus, these shifts can be used as indicators for monitoring infection of sea cucumber. Although further studies are needed to clarify and understand the virulence and mechanisms of the identified pathogens of sea cucumber, our study provides a valuable reference for determining the potential of foodborne illness caused by sea cucumber ingestion and to develop monitoring strategies of products using microbiota information.

• The Journal of Fisheries Business Administration
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.99-110
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• 2014

Flounder was selected as one of the 10 strategic export aquaculture products for seafood export expansion in 2013. The flounder aquaculture industry has promoted export market diversification and product diversification from live to processed goods as a it's main strategy. The purpose of this study is to find an improvement plan for export expansion to the United States, as it emerged as a new target export market for the flounder. A summary of the key findings is as follows. First, the western region of the United States prefers to consume live and fresh flounder, whereas the eastern region prefers to consume fresh flounder. Second, because of it's high quality, Korean flounder is favored in the western region of the United States despite it's high price, whereas in the eastern region of the United States, where production volume is high, Korean flounder has to compete with US flounders because of it's high price. Third, according to the survey results, US consumers tend to enjoy seafood, as well as flounder cuisines. Fourth, the main consumption place of flounders by US consumers are restaurants, and they prefer to consume them in the form of sashimi and sushi. Fifth, 70% of US consumers expressed willingness to consume flounder when eating out. which shows great market potential. However, the high price of Korean flounder and limited size of the live fish market act as major obstacles to expanding export volume. To expand exporting Korean flounder, continuos efforts such as price reduction, exporting highly fresh fish, the co-development of processed food with the US are needed.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Fisheries and Ocean Technology
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• v.51 no.4
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• pp.637-643
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• 2015

The diet composition of juvenile Trachurus japonicus were studied using 195 specimens collected from 2013 (May, June, July, and September) to 2014 (May, June, and July) in the coastal waters of Geumodo, Yeosu, Korea. The size of juvenile T. japonicus ranged from 4.3 to 15.2 cm in body length (BL). Juvenile T. japonicus was carnivorous and crustaceans predators that consumes mainly consumed copepods. Its diet also included small quantities of decapods, cirripedians, nematods, chaetognathans, fishes, amphipods, cumaceans, ostracods and euphausiids. The graphical method for feeding strategy revealed that juvenile T. japonicus is an opportunistic and specialized predator on copepods, especially Corycaeus. affinis, and showed narrow niche width. Juvenile T. japonicus showed ontogenetic diet change. Small size group individuals (4.3-8.0 cm BL) mainly consumed copepods. The portion of this prey item decreased in the large size group (8.0-15.2 cm BL), and this decrease was paralleled with increased consumption of decapods.

• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.561-566
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• 2020

Nowadays, with increase of seafood consumption, there have been increasing reports of defective seafood products. There have been incidents of red drum (Sciaenops ocellatus) being sold as red seabream (Pagrus major). In this study, we sought to develop and validate species-specific PCRs to differentiate between P. major and S. ocellatus to prevent the sale of S. ocellatus as P. major. Primers for P. major were designed to bind 12s rRNA and those for S. ocellatus were designed to bind 16s rRNA. Multiplex PCR showed a 468 bp amplicon for P. major and a 181 bp amplicon for S. ocellatus. The limit of detection of P. major and S. ocellatus was present at 1 ng each. The developed primers were validated with 19 P. major samples of food items purchased through the internet. Using this monitoring method, the experimental results and tested species were in agreement. Hence, the developed multiplex PCR method is considered reliable to authenticate P. major and S. ocellatus.

• Smart Media Journal
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• v.12 no.11
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• pp.134-144
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• 2023

Nowadays, Deep Learning (DL) technology is being used in several government departments. South Korea imports a lot of seafood. If the demand for fishery products is not accurately predicted, then there will be a shortage of fishery products and the price of the fishery product may rise sharply. So, South Korea's Ministry of Ocean and Fisheries is attempting to accurately predict seafood imports using deep learning. This paper introduces the solution for the fish import prediction in South Korea using the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) method. It was found that there was a huge gap between the sum of consumption and export against the sum of production especially in the case of two species that are Hairtail and Pollock. An import prediction is suggested in this research to fill the gap with some advanced Deep Learning methods. This research focuses on import prediction using Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning methods to predict the import amount more precisely. For the prediction, two Deep Learning methods were chosen which are Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM). Moreover, the Machine Learning method was also selected for the comparison between the DL and ML. Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) was selected for the error measurement which shows the difference between the predicted and actual values. The results obtained were compared with the average RMSE scores and in terms of percentage. It was found that the LSTM has the lowest RMSE score which showed the prediction with higher accuracy. Meanwhile, ML's RMSE score was higher which shows lower accuracy in prediction. Moreover, Google Trend Search data was used as a new feature to find its impact on prediction outcomes. It was found that it had a positive impact on results as the RMSE values were lowered, increasing the accuracy of the prediction.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Laboratory Science
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.69-75
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• 2004

Vibrio vulnificus is a halophilic bacterium frequently involved in human infection of seafood-associated primary septicemia and primary wound infection, mostly in men with over 40-years of age with underlying liver disease. The primary septicemia, which is the most common form of V. vulnificus infection in Korea, is defined as a systemic illness presenting fever or hypotension with recovery of V. vulnificus from blood or tissue without the apparent primary focus of infection. V. vulnificus typically do not produce acid from sucrose, but a case of primary septisemia was found in a patient at Chonnam K hospital in 1993 from whose blood a sucrose-fermenting strain was isolated. The patient was a 62-year-old man, heavy drinker, with underlying liver disease. He consumed a raw seafood dish two days before onset of the present illness. His symptoms were tenderness and swelling on the right foot. He rapidly developed septicemia, resulting in sudden death. V. vulnificus was isolated from the venous blood culture of the patient. On subculture, the isolate formed yellow colonies on TCBS and produced acid from sucrose. Because of these characteristics, species identification was not achieved by the API 20E and was delayed. Other characteristics of the isolate were identical to those of typical V. vulnificus. The isolate was common serotype O4A and possession of V. vulnificus-specific cytolysin gene was detected by PCR. The isolate was susceptible to all the antimicrobial agents tested including tetracycline, but was intermediate to colistin. In conclusion, it is important that microbiologists be aware of the presence of sucrose-positive V. vulnificus when he or she identifies gram-negative bacilli, which is isolated from the blood of patients with a recent history of raw seafood dish consumption.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.47 no.6
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• pp.530-539
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• 2021

Background: In South Korea, areas around abandoned metal mines are designated as regions with high arsenic (As) contamination. However, studies assessing urinary As exposure, As metabolism, and relevant genetic polymorphisms in residents of these metal mine areas are lacking. Objectives: To identify factors associated with As exposure and evaluate the effects of MTHFR, As3MT, and GSTO1 genetic polymorphisms on As metabolism in residents of abandoned metal mine areas by measuring urinary As species. Methods: Urinary As species (arsenite [As³⁺], arsenate [As⁵⁺], monomethyl arsonic acid, and dimethylarsinic acid) were isolated using high-performance liquid chromatography in combination with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (HPLC-ICP-MS). Four genetic polymorphisms (MTHFR A222V, MTHFR E429A, GSTO1 A140D, As3MT M287T) were analyzed in 144 residents of four areas around abandoned metal mines. Results: The study sample was comprised of 34.7% men and 65.3% women, with a mean age of 70.7±10.9 years. The urinary inorganic As concentration was higher among those consuming more than half locally produced rice (0.31 ㎍/L) than those consuming less than half such rice (0.18 ㎍/L). The urinary dimethylarsinic acid concentration was higher in the group that had consumed seafood in the past day (31.68 ㎍/L) than in those who had not (22.37 ㎍/L). Furthermore, individuals heterozygous in the MTHFR A222V and GSTO1 A140D polymorphism had higher urinary arsenic species concentrations than did individuals with a wild type or homozygous for the variant allele. Conclusions: Consumption of locally produced rice was associated with inorganic As exposure, whereas seafood consumption was associated with organic As exposure among residents of abandoned metal mine areas. There was no clear association between MTHFR A222V and GSTO1 A140D polymorphisms and As metabolism.

• Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.25 no.5
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• pp.287-297
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• 2022

The objective of this study was to evaluate the probability of norovirus foodborne illness by raw oyster consumption. One hundred fifty-six oyster samples were collected to examine the norovirus prevalence. The oyster samples were inoculated with murine norovirus and stored at 4℃-25℃. A plaque assay determined norovirus titers. The norovirus titers were fitted with the Baranyi model to calculate shoulder period (h) and death rate (Log PFU/g/h). These kinetic parameters were fitted to a polynomial model as a function of temperature. Distribution temperature and time were surveyed, and consumption data were surveyed. A dose-response model was also searched through literature. The simulation model was prepared with these data in @RISK to estimate the probability of norovirus foodborne. One sample of 156 samples was norovirus positive. Thus, the initial contamination level was estimated by the Beta distribution (2, 156), and the level was -5.3 Log PFU/g. The developed predictive models showed that the norovirus titers decreased in oysters under the storage conditions simulated with the Uniform distribution (0.325, 1.643) for time and the Pert distribution (10, 18, 25) for temperature. Consumption ratio of raw oyster was 0.98%, and average consumption amount was 1.82 g, calculated by the Pert distribution [Pert {1.8200, 1.8200, 335.30, Truncate (0, 236.8)}]. ₁F₁ hypergeometric dose-response model [1 - (1 + 2.55 × 10^-3 × dose)^-0.086] was appropriate to evaluate dose-response. The simulation showed that the probability of norovirus foodborne illness by raw oyster consumption was 5.90 × 10^-10 per person per day. The annual socioeconomic cost of consuming raw oysters contaminated with norovirus was not very high.