• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
• /
• v.32 no.10
• /
• pp.1335-1343
• /
• 2022

COVID-19 is an emerging disease that poses a severe threat to global public health. As such, there is an urgent demand for vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Here, we describe a virus-like nanoparticle candidate vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 produced by an E. coli expression system. The fusion protein of a truncated ORF2-encoded protein of aa 439~608 (p170) from hepatitis E virus CCJD-517 and the receptor-binding domain of the spike protein from SARS-CoV-2 were expressed, purified and characterized. The antigenicity and immunogenicity of p170-RBD were evaluated in vitro and in Kunming mice. Our investigation revealed that p170-RBD self-assembled into approximately 24 nm virus-like particles, which could bind to serum from vaccinated people (p < 0.001) and receptors on cells. Immunization with p170-RBD induced the titer of IgG antibody vaccine increased from 14 days post-immunization and was significantly enhanced after a booster immunization at 28 dpi, ultimately reaching a peak level on 42 dpi with a titer of 4.97 log₁₀. Pseudovirus neutralization tests showed that the candidate vaccine induced a strong neutralizing antibody response in mice. In this research, we demonstrated that p170-RBD possesses strong antigenicity and immunogenicity and could be a potential candidate for use in future SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development.

• Clinical and Experimental Pediatrics
• /
• v.59 no.sup1
• /
• pp.157-160
• /
• 2016

Coexistence of paroxysmal kinesigenic dyskinesia (PKD) with benign infantile convulsion (BIC) and centrotemporal spikes (CTS) is very rare. A 10-year-old girl presented with a 3-year history of frequent attacks of staggering while laughing and of suddenly collapsing while walking. Interictal electroencephalogram (EEG) revealed bilateral CTS, but no changes in EEG were observed during movement. The patient's medical history showed afebrile seizures 6 months after birth, while the family history showed that the patient's mother and relatives on the mother's side had similar dyskinesia. Genetic testing demonstrated that the patient had a heterozygous mutation, c.649_650insC, in the PRRT2 gene. To our knowledge, this constitutes only the second report of a patient with PKD, BIC, CTS, and a PRRT2 mutation.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Plant Biotechnology Conference
• /
• 2006.06a
• /
• pp.27.1-27.1
• /
• 2006

• IMMUNE NETWORK
• /
• v.23 no.4
• /
• pp.33.1-33.13
• /
• 2023

Vaccination against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been acknowledged as an effective mean of preventing infection and hospitalization. However, the emergence of highly transmissible SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOCs) has led to substantial increase in infections among children and adolescents. Vaccine-induced immunity and longevity have not been well defined in this population. Therefore, we aimed to analyze humoral and cellular immune responses against ancestral and SARS-CoV-2 variants after two shots of the BNT162b2 vaccine in healthy adolescents. Although vaccination induced a robust increase of spike-specific binding Abs and neutralizing Abs against the ancestral and SARS-CoV-2 variants, the neutralizing activity against the Omicron variant was significantly low. On the contrary, vaccine-induced memory CD4⁺ T cells exhibited substantial responses against both ancestral and Omicron spike proteins. Notably, CD4⁺ T cell responses against both ancestral and Omicron strains were preserved at 3 months after two shots of the BNT162b2 vaccine without waning. Polyfunctionality of vaccine-induced memory T cells was also preserved in response to Omicron spike protein. The present findings characterize the protective immunity of vaccination for adolescents in the era of continuous emergence of variants/subvariants.

• Korean journal of food and cookery science
• /
• v.31 no.5
• /
• pp.551-556
• /
• 2015

Iksan370 is a long-spike wheat developed by the Rural Development Administration yielding excellent features components such as cold resistance, disease resistance, and viviparous germination. The physicochemical and material properties of the raw wheat and milled flour of Iksan370 were analyzed to derive its appropriate uses. The raw wheat of Iksan370 showed high contents of ash and proteins at 1.71% and 13.7%, respectively. Its test weight of 763.0 g/L was similar to those of other varieties and its 1,000 kernel weight was high at 45.38 g. The milled flour of Iksan370 had an ash content of 0.45%, which corresponds with a class 1 flour, and its protein content is 12.18%, corresponding with strong flour. The damaged starch was 5.41%, which was lower than that of other varieties. The average grain size was $70.67{\mu}m$ and the grain distribution was at the level of a typical hard wheat. In the farinogram, the water absorption was 58.63%, which corresponded to the level of medium flour. The development time was 7.00 minutes, which was significantly lower than those of Jokyung and Keumkang. The degree of softening was 67.00 BU, similar to those of Yunbaek and Baekjoong. Among the physico-chemical characteristics, the high protein content and typical hard wheat grain distribution of Iksan370 were similar to those of strong wheat, usually used for bread making. However, in the farinogram, the dough development time was short and the degree of softening was high. As a result, Iksan370 was expected to have poor breadmaking properties and a small volume of the final bread product due to insufficient dough durability. On the other hand, Iksan370 showed the highest maximum gelatinization viscosity at 864.00 BU. Therefore, Iksan370 is expected to show glutinous texture when used for noodles and its flour appears to be appropriate for frying powders as well.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Crop Science Conference
• /
• 2004.04a
• /
• pp.12-27
• /
• 2004

Thanks to spectacular advances in the techniques for identifying proteins separated by two-dimensional electrophoresis and in methods for large-scale analysis of proteome variations, proteomics is becoming an essential methodology in various fields of plant sciences. Plant proteomics would be most useful when combined with other functional genomics tools and approaches. A combination of microarray and proteomics analysis will indicate whether gene regulation is controlled at the level of transcription or translation and protein accumulation. In this review, we described the catalogues of the rice proteome which were constructed in our program, and functional characterization of some of these proteins was discussed. Mass-spectrometry is a most prevalent technique to identify rapidly a large of proteins in proteome analysis. However, the conventional Western blotting/sequencing technique us still used in many laboratories. As a first step to efficiently construct protein data-file in proteome analysis of major cereals, we have analyzed the N-terminal sequences of 100 rice embryo proteins and 70 wheat spike proteins separated by two-dimensional electrophoresis. Edman degradation revealed the N-terminal peptide sequences of only 31 rice proteins and 47 wheat proteins, suggesting that the rest of separated protein spots are N-terminally blocked. To efficiently determine the internal sequence of blocked proteins, we have developed a modified Cleveland peptide mapping method. Using this above method, the internal sequences of all blocked rice proteins (i. e., 69 proteins) were determined. Among these 100 rice proteins, thirty were proteins for which homologous sequence in the rice genome database could be identified. However, the rest of the proteins lacked homologous proteins. This appears to be consistent with the fact that about 30% of total rice cDNA have been deposited in the database. Also, the major proteins involved in the growth and development of rice can be identified using the proteome approach. Some of these proteins, including a calcium-binding protein that fumed out to be calreticulin, gibberellin-binding protein, which is ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase activate in rice, and leginsulin-binding protein in soybean have functions in the signal transduction pathway. Proteomics is well suited not only to determine interaction between pairs of proteins, but also to identify multisubunit complexes. Currently, a protein-protein interaction database for plant proteins (http://genome .c .kanazawa-u.ac.jp/Y2H)could be a very useful tool for the plant research community. Recently, we are separated proteins from grain filling and seed maturation in rice to perform ESI-Q-TOF/MS and MALDI-TOF/MS. This experiment shows a possibility to easily and rapidly identify a number of 2-DE separated proteins of rice by ESI-Q-TOF/MS and MALDI-TOF/MS. Therefore, the Information thus obtained from the plant proteome would be helpful in predicting the function of the unknown proteins and would be useful in the plant molecular breeding. Also, information from our study could provide a venue to plant breeder and molecular biologist to design their research strategies precisely.

• KOREAN JOURNAL OF CROP SCIENCE
• /
• v.25 no.4
• /
• pp.43-58
• /
• 1980

The study was intended to know the responses of the nitrogen application levels (3, 6, 9, 12 and 15kg ai per $1O^a$) to grain yield and quality of two-malting barley, Golden melon and Hyang maek in 1980. There was investigated chlorophyll content, dry weight, heading, grain yield, yield components, contents of protein, fat and carbohydrate and activity of $\beta$-amylase and invertase. Nitrogen increment was effective to increase of number of grains per spike and number of spikes per unit area, increase of protein content and decrease of $\beta$-amylase activity, but it was not recognized the yield increase under the 12% protein content.

• Molecules and Cells
• /
• v.38 no.10
• /
• pp.829-835
• /
• 2015

It has been suggested that AUXIN BINDING PROTEIN 1 (ABP1) functions as an apoplastic auxin receptor, and is known to be involved in the post-transcriptional process, and largely independent of the already well-known SKP-cullin-F-box-transport inhibitor response (TIR1) /auxin signaling F-box (AFB) ($SCF^{TIR1/AFB}$) pathway. In the past 10 years, several key components downstream of ABP1 have been reported. After perceiving the auxin signal, ABP1 interacts, directly or indirectly, with plasma membrane (PM)-localized transmembrane proteins, transmembrane kinase (TMK) or SPIKE1 (SPK1), or other unidentified proteins, which transfer the signal into the cell to the Rho of plants (ROP). ROPs interact with their effectors, such as the ROP interactive CRIB motif-containing protein (RIC), to regulate the endocytosis/exocytosis of the auxin efflux carrier PIN-FORMED (PIN) proteins to mediate polar auxin transport across the PM. Additionally, ABP1 is a negative regulator of the traditional $SCF^{TIR1/AFB}$ auxin signaling pathway. However, Gao et al. (2015) very recently reported that ABP1 is not a key component in auxin signaling, and the famous abp1-1 and abp1-5 mutant Arabidopsis lines are being called into question because of possible additional mutantion sites, making it necessary to reevaluate ABP1. In this review, we will provide a brief overview of the history of ABP1 research.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
• /
• v.30 no.3
• /
• pp.281-291
• /
• 2003

In this review, we described the catalogues of the rice proteome which were constructed in our program, and functional characterization of some of these proteins was discussed. Mass-spectrometry is the most prevalent technique to rapidly identify a large number of proteome analysis. However, the conventional Western blotting/sequencing technique has been used in many laboratories. As a first step to efficiently construct protein cata-file in proteome analysis of major cereals, we have analyzed the N-terminal sequences of 100 rice embryo proteins and 70 wheat spike proteins separated by two-dimensional electrophoresis. Edman degradation revealed the N-terminal peptide sequences of only 31 rice proteins and 47 wheat proteins, suggesting that the rest of separated protein sports are N-terminally blocked. To efficiently determine the internal sequence of blocked proteins, we have developed a modified Cleveland peptide mapping method. Using this above method, the internal sequences of all blocked rice proteins(i, e., 69 proteins) were determined. Among these 100 rice proteins, thirty were proteins for which homologous sequence in the rice genome database could be identified. However, the rest of the proteins lacked homologous proteins. This appears to be consistent with the fact that about 45% of total rice cDNA have been deposited in the EMBL database. Also, the major proteins involved in the growth and development of rice can be identified using the proteome approach. Some of these proteins, including a calcium-binding protein that tuned out to be calreticulin, gibberellin-binding protein, which is ribulose-1.5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygense active in rice, and leginsulin-binding protein in soybean have functions in the signal transduction pathway. Proteomics is well suited not only to determine interaction between pairs of proteins, but also to identify multisubunit complexes. Currently, a protein-protein interaction database for plant proteins(http://genome.c.kanazawa-u.ac.jp/Y2H)could be a very useful tool for the plant research community. Also, the information thus obtained from the plant proteome would be helpful in predicting the function of the unknown proteins and would be useful be in the plant molecular breeding.

• Journal of Microbiology
• /
• v.44 no.1
• /
• pp.83-91
• /
• 2006

The sudden appearance and potential lethality of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV) in humans has resulted in a focusing of new attention on the determination of both its origins and evolution. The relationship existing between SARS-CoV and other groups of coronaviruses was determined via analyses of phylogenetic trees and comparative genomic analyses of the coronavirus genes: polymerase (Orflab), spike (S), envelope (E), membrane (M) and nucleocapsid (N). Although the coronaviruses are traditionally classed into 3 groups, with SARS-CoV forming a $4^{th}$ group, the phylogenetic position and origins of SARS-CoV remain a matter of some controversy. Thus, we conducted extensive phylogeneitc analyses of the genes common to all coronavirus groups, using the Neighbor-joining, Maximum-likelihood, and Bayesian methods. Our data evidenced largely identical topology for all of the obtained phylogenetic trees, thus supporting the hypothesis that the relationship existing between SARS-CoV and group 2 coronavirus is a monophyletic one. Additional comparative genomic studies, including sequence similarity and protein secondary structure analyses, suggested that SARS-Co V may bear a closer relationship with group 2 than with the other coronavirus groups. Although our data strongly suggest that group 2 coronaviruses are most closely related with SARS-CoV, further and more detailed analyses may provide us with an increased amount of information regarding the origins and evolution of the coronaviruses, most notably SARS-CoV.