• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.24 no.12
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• pp.1699-1706
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• 2014

A lichenase gene (mt-lic) was identified for the first time through function-based screening of a soil metagenomic library. Its deduced amino acid sequence exhibited a high degree of homology with endo-${\beta}$-1,3-1,4-glucanase (having both lichenase and chitosanase activities), encoded by the bgc gene of Bacillus circulans WL-12. The recombinant lichenase overexpressed and purified from Escherichia coli was able to efficiently hydrolyze both barley ${\beta}$-glucan and lichenan. The enzyme showed maximal activity at a pH of 6.0 at $50^{\circ}C$, with Azo-barley-glucan as the substrate. The metal ions $Mn^{2+}$, $Mg^{2+}$, $Ca^{2+}$, and $Fe^{2+}$ enhanced the enzymatic activity, whereas the $Cu^{2+}$ and $Zn^{2+}$ ions inhibited the enzymatic activity. The $K_m$ and $V_{max}$ values of the purified lichenase were determined to be 0.45 mg/ml and 24.83 U/min/mg of protein, respectively.

• Development and Reproduction
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.127-133
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• 2016

Purine metabolism is known factor for nuclear maturation of oocytes through both follicle cells and oocyte itself. However, it is largely unknown the roles of purine metabolism in the oocyte competence for fertilization and early development. In this study, the effects of adenosine in oocyte competence for development were examined using adenosine and its synthetic inhibitors. Adenosine treatment from GV intact stage for 18 hr (fGV) caused of decrease the fertilization rate but of increase the cleavage rate compared from the other stage treatment groups. Hadacidin did not effect on fertilization rate but increased cleavage rate without stage specificity. Adenosine did not block the effects of hadacidin with the exception of fGV group. Inhibition of purine synthetic pathways the fertilization rate was decreased in the fGV and fGVB groups but increased in the fMII group. Exogenous adenosine caused of decrease fertilization rate in the fGVB group but increase in the fMII group. Cleavage rate was dramatically increased in the adenosine treatment with synthetic inhibitors. It means that the metabolism of purine has stage specific effects on fertilization and cleavage. Exogenous adenosine had only can improve oocyte developmental competence when it treated at GV intact stage. On the other hand, endogenous synthesis in all maturation stage cause of increase the cleavage rate without effects on fertilization. These data suggest that adenosine at GV stage as a paracrine fashion and inhibitions of endogenous adenosine in all stage improve oocyte developmental competence.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.807-822
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• 2016

Starting as a glutamate producer, Corynebacterium glutamicum has played a variety of roles in the industrial production of amino acids, one of the most important areas of white biotechnology. From shortly after its genome information became available, C. glutamicum has been applied in various production processes for value-added chemicals, fuels, and polymers, as a key organism in industrial biotechnology alongside the surprising progress in systems biology and metabolic engineering. In addition, recent studies have suggested another potential for C. glutamicum as a synthetic biology platform chassis that could move the new era of industrial microbial biotechnology beyond the classical field. Here, we review the recent progress and perspectives in relation to C. glutamicum, which demonstrate it as one of the most promising and valuable workhorses in the field of industrial biotechnology.

• International Journal of Oral Biology
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.169-176
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• 2014

A positional scanning synthetic peptide combinatorial library (PS-SCL) was screened in order to identify antimicrobial peptides against the cariogenic oral bacteria, Streptococcus mutans. Activity against Streptococcus gordonii and Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans was also examined. The library was comprised of six sub-libraries with the format $O_{(1-6)}XXXXX-NH_2$, where O represents one of 19 amino acids (excluding cysteine) and X represents equimolar mixture of these. Each sub-library was tested for antimicrobial activity against S. mutans and evaluated for antimicrobial activity against S. gordonii and A. actinomycetemcomitans. The effect of peptides was observed using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Two semi-mixture peptides, RXXXXN-$NH_2$ (pep-1) and WXXXXN-$NH_2$ (pep-2), and one positioned peptide, RRRWRN-$NH_2$ (pep-3), were identified. Pep-1 and pep-2 showed significant antimicrobial activity against Gram positive bacteria (S. mutans and S. gordonii), but not against Gram negative bacteria (A. actinomycetemcomitans). However, pep-3 showed very low antimicrobial activity against all three bacteria. Pep-3 did not form an amphiphilic ${\alpha}$-helix, which is a required structure for most antimicrobial peptides. Pep-1 and pep-2 were able to disrupt the membrane of S. mutans. Small libraries of biochemically-constrained peptides can be used to generate antimicrobial peptides against S. mutans and other oral microbes. Peptides derived from such libraries may be candidate antimicrobial agents for the treatment of oral microorganisms.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.264-269
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• 2012

Recently, we reported that the synthetic Coprisin analog peptide 9-mer dimer CopA3 (consisted of all-L amino acid sequence) was designed based on a defensin-like peptide, Coprisin isolated from Copris tripartitus. The 9-mer dimer CopA3 (L-CopA3) had antibacterial activity and induced apoptosis in human leukemia cells via a caspase-independent pathway. In this study, all of amino acid sequences of L-CopA3 were modified to all D-form amino acids (DCopA3) to develop a more effective antimicrobial peptide. We investigated whether D-CopA3 had antimicrobial activities against pathogenic microorganisms and pro-apoptotic effects in human leukemia cells (U937, Jurkat, and AML-2). The synthetic peptide D-CopA3 had antimicrobial activities against various pathogenic bacteria and yeast fungus with MIC values in the 4~64 ${\mu}M$ range. Moreover, D-CopA3 caused cell growth inhibition, and increased the chromosomal DNA fragmentation and the expression of inflammatory cytokines, TNF-${\alpha}$ and IL1-${\beta}$, transcripts in human leukemia cells. The all-D amino acid peptide DCopA3 proved as effective as the L-CopA3 reported previously. These results provide the basis for developing D-CopA3 as a new antibiotic peptide.

• Journal of Microbiology
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.115-120
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• 2003

Mex67p/Tap are evolutionally conserved mRNA export factors. To identify mutations in genes that are functionally linked to mex67 with respect to mRNA export, we used a synthetic lethal genetic screen in Schizosaccharomyces pombe. Three synthetic lethal mutants were isolated and mutations in these mutants defined separate complementation groups. These mutants exhibited the accumulation of poly A$\^$+/ RNA in the nucleus, with a decrease in the cytoplasm under synthetically lethal conditions, suggesting that the mutations cause an mRNA nuclear export defect. In addition, the S. pombe genes that were found to be involved in mRNA export did not suppress the synthetic lethality of these mutants. These results indicate that the isolated mutants contain mutations in new genes, which are involved in mRNA export from the nucleus.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.511-520
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• 2016

The most energy-demanding step of wastewater treatment is the aeration-dependent elimination of organic carbon. Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) offer an alternative strategy in which carbon elimination is conducted by anaerobic microorganisms that transport respiratory electrons originating from carbon oxidation to an anode. Hence, chemical energy is directly transformed into electrical energy. In this study, the use and stability of barcode-containing exoelectrogenic model biofilms under non-axenic wastewater treatment conditions are described. Genomic barcodes were integrated in Shewanella oneidensis, Geobacter sulfurreducens, and G. metallireducens. These barcodes are unique for each strain and allow distinction between those cells and naturally occurring wild types as well as quantification of the amount of cells in a biofilm via multiplex qPCR. MFCs were pre-incubated with these three strains, and after 6 days the anodes were transferred into MFCs containing synthetic wastewater with 1% wastewater sludge. Over time, the system stabilized and the coulomb efficiency was constant. Overall, the initial synthetic biofilm community represented half of the anodic population at the end of the experimental timeline. The part of the community that contained a barcode was dominated by G. sulfurreducens cells (61.5%), while S. oneidensis and G. metallireducens cells comprised 10.5% and 17.9%, respectively. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to describe the stability of a synthetic exoelectrogenic consortium under non-axenic conditions. The observed stability offers new possibilities for the application of synthetic biofilms and synthetically engineered organisms fed with non-sterile waste streams.

• Proceedings of the Zoological Society Korea Conference
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• 1999.10b
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• pp.175.2-175
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• 1999

No Abstract, See Full Text

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.628-632
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• 2008

Egg production traits are economically important both for egg-laying and broiler lines of chicken. In sheep, the Q249R mutation in BMPR-IB is associated with ovulation rate. The present study cloned a partial chicken BMPR-IB fragment which contained the corresponding ovine Q249R mutation, including partial exon 6 and exon 7 and full-length intron 6. Five nucleotide changes were identified by alignment of the fragment amplified from Jining Bairi and Zang chickens. Among these nucleotide substitutions, the C/T transition at the base position of 35 and the A/G transition at the base position of 287 were found to be highly polymorphic, and named as SNPs C35T and A287G, respectively. For the SNP C35T, 331 hens of a synthetic broiler line were genotyped by a PCR-SSCP approach and allele C was found to be dominant. For the SNP A287G, 604 birds from the synthetic broiler line, a commercial egg-laying line, as well as three Chinese indigenous chicken breeds were genotyped by a PCR-RFLP technique. The associations of these two SNPs with egg production traits in the broiler line were analyzed. The results indicated that both the C35T and the A287G SNPs were not associated with egg production at 33wks and from 33wks to 42 wks (p>0.1), whereas the SNP A287G was associated with egg production from 47 to 56 wks (p<0.05). The dominance genetic effects on this latter trait and on egg production from 33 to 42 wks were significant (p<0.05).

• Journal of Microbiology
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.32-36
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• 2004

We have previously isolated three synthetic lethal mutants from Schizosaccharomyces pombe in order to identify mutations in the genes that are functionally linked to spmex67 with respect to mRNA export. A novel rsm1 gene was isolated by complementation of the growth defect in one of the synthetic lethal mutants, SLMex1. The rsml gene contains no introns and encodes a 296 amino-add-long protein with the RING finger domain, a C3HC4 in the N-terminal half. The Δrsm1 null mutant is viable, but it showed a slight poly(A)$\^$＋/ RNA accumulation in the nucleus. Also, the combination of Δrsm1 and Δspmex67 mutations confers synthetic lethality that is accompanied by the severe poly(A)$\^$＋/ RNA export defect. These results suggest that rsm1 is involved in mRNA export from the nucleus.