• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.122-129
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• 1998

It were reported that antifungal mechanism of Enterobacter cloacae is a volatile ammonia that produced by the strain in soil, and the production of ammonia is related to the bacterial urease activity. A powerful bacterium SH14 against soil-borne pathogen Fusarium solani, which cause root rot of many important crops, was selected from a ginseng pathogen suppressive soil. The strain SH14 was identified as Bacillus subtilis by cultural, biochemical, morphological method, and $API^{circledR}$ test. From several in vitro tests, the antifungal substance that is produced from B. subtilis SH14 was revealed as heat-stable and low-molecular weight antibiotic substance. In order to construct the multifunctional biocontrol agent, the urease gene of Bacillus pasteurii which can produce pathogenes-suppressive ammonia transferred into antifungal bacterium. First, a partial BamH I digestion fragment of plasmid pBU11 containing the alkalophilic B. pasteurii l1859 urease gene was inserted into the BamH I site of pEB203 and expressed in Escherichia coli JM109. The recombinant plasmid was designated as pGU366. The plasmid pGU366 containing urease gene was introduced into the B. subtilis SH14 with PEG-induced protoplast transformation (PIP) method. The urease gene was very stably expressed in the transformant of B. subtilis SH14. Also, the optimal conditions for transformation were established and the highest transformation frequency was obtained by treatment of lysozyme for 90 min, and then addition of 1.5 ${mu}g$/ml DNA and 40% PEG4000. From the in vitro antifungal test against F. solani, antifungal activity of B. subtilis SH14(pGu366) containing urease gene was much higher than that of the host strain. Genetical development of B. subtilis SH14 by transfer of urease gene can be responsible for enhanced biocontrol efficacy with its antibiotic action.

• 한국생물공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.04a
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• pp.532-534
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• 2005

Several extracts of Chinese herbs are known to have antimicrobial efface on Helicobacter pylori. The inhibition action is believed to be anti-urease activity of the substance in the herbs. In this study ethanol (70%) extracts of Mume Fructus showed anti-urease activity far better than previously reported substance such as Caesalpinia sappan L. and Forsythiae suspensa VAHL.

• Advances in Traditional Medicine
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.79-84
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• 2007

Urease was immobilized with calcium alginate by entrapment method in the form of spherical beads and stored in Tris/acetate buffer (pH 7.3) at $4^{\circ}C$. Urease immobilized at different concentration of alginate beads (3%, 4% and 5%) showed higher apparent $K_{m}$ values than the soluble urease. Furthermore, $K_{m}$ has been shown to be corelated with effective diffusion coefficient (De) at different concentration of alginate gel. The present study showed that diffusion and reaction contribute to control the overall rate.

• Korean Journal of Poultry Science
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.105-115
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• 1995

The balance of microbial populations in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract of all warm-blooded animals is critical to the maintenance of health and resistance to disease. The composition of the populations can be altered by diet and environment, making the host animal susceptible to disease, and reducing growth rate and feed efficiency. Some feed additives including antimicrobial agents, prohiotics or yucca extract have been used to promote growth and feed utilization. There is evidence that part of growth-promoting effect of those feed additives results from the suppression of microbial urease activity or ammonia production in the GI contents of animals. Over 200 microbial species have been known to produce urease and the product of urea hydrolysis, ammonia, is toxic to animals. Carefully tested probiotics or other urease-suppressing agents can be a possible alternative to antimicrobial agents including antibiotics as growth promotants used for animals feeds.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.32 no.12
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• pp.4377-4381
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• 2011

In this study, real-time and label-free methods for monitoring the enzymatic reaction of urease, which releases ammonia through the hydrolysis of urea in an aqueous solution, were developed using a liquid crystal (LC)-based pH sensor. Nematic liquid crystal 4-cyano-4'-pentylbiphenyl (5CB), doped with 4'-pentyl-biphenyl-4-carboxylic acid (PBA), exhibited a shift in optical appearance from bright to dark when it was in contact with ammonia generated from the enzymatic reaction between urease and urea. This optical change was attributed to the anchoring transitions of LCs caused by hydrophobic interactions between the tails of deprotonted PBA ($PBA^-$) molecules and the LCs at the aqueous/LC interface. This novel technique holds great promise for the sensitive detection of urease along with its substrates and inhibitors.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.8 no.6
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• pp.700-704
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• 1998

Each of the recombinant structural genes of Helicobacter pylori urease, ureA and ureB, was cloned and overexpressed as inclusion bodies. Solubilization and renaturation of the inclusion bodies were carried out, to accelerate the pairing of sulfhydryl groups and the incorporation of nickel ions, which would lead to the native structure with high enzyme activity. Rates of urea hydrolysis were monitored as an indication of in vitro activation of renatured ureases. The activation of the apoprotein using 1 mM nickel ion, 100 mM sodium bicarbonate and a 10:1 ratio of reducing power resulted in a weak urease activity (about 11% of the native urease activity encoded by pTZ 19R/ure-l). When a sparse matrix screen method originally discovered for the crystallization of proteins was used, the activity increased higher than that obtained using glutathione. The effect of polyethylene glycol (PEG) on the activity was noticeable, giving two-fold increase in the specific activity (about 11 U/mg of protein corresponding to 22% of the native urease activity encoded by pTZ19R/ure-1).

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.286-290
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• 2006

A genomic library of Streptococcus vestibularis ATCC49124 was constructed in an E. coli plasmid vector, and the urease-positive transformants harboring the urease gene cluster were isolated on Christensen-urea agar plates. The minimal DNA region required for urease activity was located in a 5.6 kb DNA fragment, and a DNA sequence analysis revealed the presence of a partial ureI gene and seven complete open reading frames, corresponding to ureA, B, C, E, F, G, and D, respectively. The nucleotide sequence over the entire ure gene cluster and 3'-end flanking region of S. vestibularis was up to 95% identical to that of S. salivarius, another closely related oral bacterium, and S. thermophilus, isolated from dairy products. The predicted amino acid sequences for the structural peptides were 98-100% identical to the corresponding peptides in S. salivarius and S. thermophilus, respectively, whereas those for the accessory proteins were 96-100% identical. The recombinant E. coli strain containing the S. vestibularis ure gene cluster expressed a high level of the functional urease holoenzyme when grown in a medium supplemented with 1 mM nickel chloride. The enzyme was purified over 49-fold by using DEAE-Sepharose FF, Superdex HR 200, and Mono-Q HR 5/5 column chromatography. The specific activity of the purified enzyme was 2,019 U/mg, and the Michaelis constant ($K_{m}$) of the enzyme was estimated to be 1.4 mM urea. A Superose 6HR gel filtration chromatography study demonstrated that the native molecular weight was about 196 kDa.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.51 no.5
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• pp.591-596
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• 2013

Urease activity of Helicobacter pylori was most strongly inhibited by extract of Mume Fructus among ethanol (70%, v/v) extract of 6 herbal materials selected from our previous work, database on traditional herbal materials, and literature data on Korean plant resources. Active compounds in the extract of Mume Fructus were separated by batch extraction, and further purified by chromatography in a silica gel column and an octadecyl silica gel column using solvents of different polarity. By NMR analysis of the last chromatographic fraction we identified ursolic acid as the active compound of urease inhibition. The result suggests that this component in Mume Fructus can possibly be used for the eradication of H. pylori.

• Applied Chemistry for Engineering
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.10-16
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• 2007

In this study, we examined the preparation and hydrolysis property of immobilized urease membrane to decompose harmful urea in the body and remove ammonia which was produced by its decomposition. Urease immobilized membrane was prepared by introducing anion-exchange group DEA into porous hollow-fiber membrane by radiation graft polymerization method, and immobilization of urease. When urease was immobilized at membrane introduced with anion-exchange group, the more increasing grafting rate, the more increasing immobilization amount. The result originates from the fact that a greater amount of protein was immobilized by forming a multilayer on the longer grafted chain. Meanwhile, the addition of the cross-linker was possible not only to suppress separation phenomenon produced during a washing process of immobilized urease membrane but also to enable the recycling of membrane. Urease Immobilized membrane with no separation phenomenon was prepared by cross-linking reaction for 5 h, and the hydrolysis rate of prepared urease immobilized membrane was over 98% and 50%, respectively, in 1 mol and 4 mol urea solutions.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.19 no.11
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• pp.1456-1463
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• 2009

Vibrio parahaemolyticus possessing urease-positive property is relatively rare, but such strains consistently exhibit the TDH-related hemolysin (TRH) gene. In this study, we examined the effects of incubation temperature on urease activity expression, using the TH3996 and AQ4673 strains where the enzyme activity is known to be temperature-dependent and -independent, respectively. In the TH3996 strain, $\beta$-galactosidase activity was 4.4-fold lower after $30^{\circ}C$ cultivation than after $37^{\circ}C$ in a ureR-lacZ fusion strain, but temperature dependency was not found in ureD- or nikA-lacZ fusion strains. However, ureR-, ureD-, and nikA-lacZ fusions of the AQ4673 strain was not influenced by incubation temperature. We compared the promoter sequences of ureR between the above two strains. Intriguingly, we detected mismatches of two nucleotides between the two strains located at positions -66 and -108 upstream of the methionine initiation codon for UreR. Additionally, urease activity was not affected by culture temperature at either $30^{\circ}C$ or $37^{\circ}C$ by allelic introduction of the AQ4673 ureR gene into the TH3996 ureR deletion mutant. Taken together, our study demonstrates that the transcriptional factor UreR is involved in the temperature dependency of urease activity, and two nucleotides within the ureR promoter region are of particular importance for the urease activity dependency of V. parahaemolyticus.