• Plant Biotechnology Reports
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.53-60
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• 2011

Artemisinin is effective against both chloroquine-resistant and -sensitive strains of Plasmodium species. However, the low yield of artemisinin from cultivated and wild plants is a serious limitation to the commercialization of this drug. Optimization of artemisinin yield either in vivo or in vitro is therefore highly desirable. To this end, we have overexpressed the 3-hydroxy-3-methyl-glutaryl-coenzyme A reductase (HMGR) gene (hmgr) from Catharanthus roseus L. in Artemisia annua L. and analyzed its influence on artemisinin content. PCR and Southern blot analyses revealed that the transgenic plants showed stable integration of the foreign hmgr gene. The reverse transcriptase-PCR results suggested that the hmgr was expressed at the transcriptional level in transgenic lines of Artemisia annua L., while the high-performance liquid chromatography analysis showed that artemisinin content was significantly increased in a number of the transgenic lines. Artemisinin content in one of the A. annua transgenic lines was 38.9% higher than that in non-transgenic plants, and HMGR enzyme activity in transgenic A. annua L. was also higher than that in the non-transgenic lines.

• KOREAN JOURNAL OF CROP SCIENCE
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• v.48 no.4
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• pp.326-333
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• 2003

Transgenic rice plants expressing a Bacillus subtilis protoporphyrinogen oxidase (Protox), the last shared enzyme of the porphyrin pathway in the expressed cytoplasm or the plastids, were compared with non-trangenic rice plants in their growth characteristics such as tiller number, plant height, biomass, and yield. Transgenic rice plants of $\textrm{T}_3$ generation had 8 to 15 % and 25 to 43% increases in tiller number compared to non-transgenic rice plants at 4 and 8 weeks after transplanting(WAT); similar values were observed for $\textrm{T}_4$ generation at 4 and 8 WAT. However, the plant height in both $\textrm{T}_3$ and $\textrm{T}_4$ generations was similar between transgenic rice plants and non-transgenic rice plants at 4 and 8 WAT. Transgenic rice plants had 13 to 32% increase in above-ground biomass and 9 to 28% increase in grain yield compared to non-transgenic rice plants, demonstrating that biomass and yield correlate with each other. The increased grain yield of the transgenic rice plants was closely associated with the increased panicle number per plant. The percent of filled grain, thousand grains and spikelet number per panicle were similar between transgenic and non-transgenic rice plants. Generally, the growth and yield of transgenic generations ($\textrm{T}_2$, $\textrm{T}_3$, and $\textrm{T}_4$) and gene expressing sites (cytoplasm-expressed and plastid-targeted transgenic rice plants) were similar, although they slightly varied with generations as well as with gene expressing sites. The transgenic rice plants had promotive effects, indicating that regulation of the porphyrin pathway by expression of B. subtilis Protox in rice influences plant growth and yield.

• Korean Journal Plant Pathology
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.374-379
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• 1995

The cDNA of tobacco mosaic virus-pepper strain (TMV-P) coat protein (CP) genes were introduced into tobacco plants (Nicotiana tabacum cv. Samsun nn) using a binary Ti plasmid vector of Agrobacterium tumefaciens. these cDNAs introduced into tobacco plants were detected by polymerase chain reaction. Symptom development was distinctly suppressed in the transgenic plant introduced buy sense CP cDNA when the plant was inoculated with TMV-P, while in transgenic tobacco plants of antisense CP gene, symptom development was not suppressed as in non-transgenic plants. TMV-P concentration in the sense CP transgenic tobacco plant was decreased to 1/14 of the concentration in non-transgenic plants. Expression of the kanamycin resistance gene of these transgenic plants could be detected in the progeny.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.155-161
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• 2002

The HCV gene was expressed in potato plants under the control of the constitutive CaMV 355 promoter or tuber-specific patatin promoter. Solanum tuberosum plants carrying a plant expression vector harboring the encoding region of HCV gene were generated by Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated in vitro transformation methods. The presence of HCV gene in the plant genome was detected by PCR and DNA hybridization experiments. We obtained the 5 lines of transgenic potato with the pMBPHCV construct and 4 lines of transgenic potato with the pATHCV construct. The HCV transgenic stably integrated into the potato genome, as well as their transcription. HCV mRNA was identified in leaf and tuber tissues of transgenic plants by Northern blot analysis. The transgenic potato plants produced the expected transcript, and the corresponding HCV protein accumulated in individual transgenic plants.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.156-163
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• 2017

A greenhouse experiment was conducted for evaluation of ecological effects of transgenic melon plants in the rhizospheric soil in terms of soil properties, enzyme activities and microbial communities. Organic matter content of soil under transgenic melon plants was significantly higher than that of soil with non-transgenic melon plants. Significant variations were observed in organic matter, total P and K in soil cultivation with transgenic melon plants. There were also significant variations in the total numbers of colony forming units of fungi, actinomycetes and bacteria between soils treated with transgenic and non-transgenic melon plants. Transgenic and non-transgenic melon significantly enhanced several enzymes activities including urease, acid phosphatase, alkalin phosphatase, arysulphtase, ${\beta}$ glucosidase, dehydrogenase, protease and catalase. Soil polyphenoloxidase activity of $T_1$ transgenic melon was lower than that of $T_0$ transgenic melon and a non-melon plant during the same period. The first generation transgenic melon plants ($T_0$) showed significantly greater (p<0.05) effect on the activitiy of arylsulfatase, which increased from $2.540{\times}10^6CFU\;g^{-1}$ (control) to $19.860{\times}10^6CFU\;g^{-1}$ ($T_0$). These results clearly indicated that transgenic melon might change microbial communities, enzyme activities and soil chemical properties.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.72-76
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• 2010

To develop transgenic cucumber tolerant to abiotic stress, a cotyledonary-node explants were co-cultivated with Agrobacterium tumefaciens (EHA101) carrying TPSP gene (pHC30-TPSP). After transfer to fresh medium every two week for eight weeks, putative transgenic plants were selected when shoots grown a length greater than 3 cm from the cotyledonary-node explants on selection medium supplemented with $5\;mgl^{-1}$ phospinotricin as selectable agent. The confirmation of transgenic cucumber was based on the Northern blot analysis. Thirty four shoots (5.2%) with resistance to phospinotricin were obtained from 660 explants inoculated. Of them, transformants were only confirmed from 11 plants (1.7%). Transgenic cucumber expressing TPSP gene was more synthesized at 3.8 times amounts of trehalose (0.014 mg g fresh $wt^{-1}$) than non-transformants (0.0037 mg g fresh $wt^{-1}$). However, all of transgenic plants showed abnormal morphology, including stunted growth (< height 15 cm), shrunken leaves, and sterility as compared with non-transgenic plants (> height 150 cm) under the same growth environment. These results lead us to speculate that the overproduction of trehalose was toxic for cucumber, even though that had known for rice as non-toxic.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.123-127
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• 2004

In many organisms, trehalose has been Down as an energy source and a protectant against various environmental stresses such as desiccation, freezing, heat and osmotic pressure. Previously, we have isolated and characterized the genes encoding trehalose-6-phosphate synthase (ZrTPS1) and trehalose-6-phosphate phosphatase (ZrTPS2) from one of the most osmotolerant yeasts, Zygosaccharomyces rouxii. We have also generated transgenic plants by co-introduction of ZrTPS2 and ZrTPS2 into potato plant (ZrTPS2-2A-ZrTPS1 plant) in an attempt to metabolically engineer trehalose in the transgenic plant using the foot-and-mouth disease virus(FMDV) 2A system and to generate drought resistant crop plants. In this research, we assayed previously generated the ZrTPS2-2A-ZrTPS1 plant biofunctionally by drought treatment, and measured the amount of trehalose in the ZrTPS2-2A-ZrTPS1 transgenic plants. The ZrTPS2-2A-ZrTPS1 transgenic plant showed strong drought resistance in spite of little or no accumulation of transgenic in he transgenic plant compared with control plant.

• Animal cells and systems
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.225-236
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• 2010

We compared the composition of phospholipid fatty acids (PLFA) to assess the microbial community structure in the soil and rhizosphere community of non-transgenic watermelons and transgenic watermelons in Miryang farmlands in Korea during the spring and summer of 2005. The PLFA data were seasonally examined for the number of PLFA to determine whether there is any difference in the microbial community in soils from two types of watermelons, non-transgenic and transgenic. We identified 78 PLFAs from the rhizosphere samples of the two types of watermelons. We found eight different PLFAs for the type of plants and sixteen PLFAs for the interaction of plant type and season. The PLFA data were analyzed by analysis of variance separated by plant type (P<0.0085), season (P<0.0154), and the plant type${\times}$season interaction (P<0.1595). Non-parametric multidimensional scaling (NMS showed a small apparent difference but multi-response permutation procedures (MRPP) confirmed that there was no difference in microbial community structure for soils of both plant types. Conclusively, there was no significant adverse effect of transgenic watermelon on bacterial and fungal relative abundance as measured by PLFA. We could reject our hypothesis that there might be an adverse effect from transgenic watermelon with our statistical results. Therefore, we can suggest the use of this PLFA methodology to examine the adverse effects of transgenic plants on the soil microbial community.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Plant Biotechnology Conference
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• 2002.04a
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• pp.49-58
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• 2002

Oxidative stress derived from reactive oxygen species (ROS) is one of the major damaging factors in plants exposed to environmental stress. In order to develop the platform technology to solve the global food and environmental problems in the 21s1 century, we focus on the understanding of the antioxidative mechanism in plant cells, the development of oxidative stress-inducible antioxidant genes, and the development of transgenic plants with enhanced tolerance to stress. In this report, we describe our recent results on industrial transgenic plants by the gene manipulation of antioxidant enzymes. Transgenic tobacco plants expressing both superoxide dismutase (SOD) and ascorbate peroxidase (APX) in chloroplasts were developed and were evaluated their protection effects against stresses, suggesting that simultaneous overexpression of both SOD and APX in chloroplasts has synergistic effects to overcome the oxidative stress under unfavorable environments. Transgenic tobacco plants expressing a human dehydroascorbate reductase gene in chloroplasts were showed the protection against the oxidative stress in plants. Transgenic cucumber plants expressing high level of SOD in fruits were successfully generated to use the functional cosmetic purpose as a plant bioreactor. In addition, we developed a strong oxidative stress-inducible peroxidase promoter, SWPA2 from sweetpotato (Ipomoea batatas). We anticipate that SWPA2 promoter will be biotechnologically useful for the development of transgenic plants with enhanced tolerance to environmental stress and particularly transgenic cell lines engineered to produce key pharmaceutical proteins.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.111-115
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• 2006

This study was carried out to establish genetic transformation of Rot 3 gene into perilla plants and to evaluate aromatic compounds, brightness, anthocyanin contents and leaf index in Rot 3 overexpressing transgenic lines. Rot 3 transmitted successfully from T$_1$ to T$_2$ generation showing stable gene expression. It revealed that there was no difference between transgenic and non-transgenic plants in major agronomic characteristics of progeny analysis. There was not much difference in aromatic compounds and leaf brightness did not showed variations between transgenic and non-transgenic, but leaf index was distinguished, respectively.