• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.136-142
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• 2006

Haematococcus pluvialis is a great producer of astaxanthin (3,3'-dihydroxy-$\beta$,$\beta$-carotene-4,4'-dione). The activities of astaxanthin include potential cancer prevention, immune response enhancement, antioxidant activity, and so on. Nevertheless, it tried to manipulate by mutation for overcoming low growth rate of wild type and limited production of astaxanthin. Mutated colony that is lager and more reddish one than wild type was selected by attempting to expose strains to UV irradiation and to treat chemical such as EMS and colchicines as mutagen. Selected mutants were further screened using inhibitors of the carotenoid biosynthetic pathway. Inhibitors used were nicotine and diphenylamine and both had decreased the survival rate by 40-50%. Among over 50,000 mutant colonies screened, two strains were selected. One selected mutant strain (U15-5) from UV treatment showed 1.68-fold higher total carotenoid contents per cell than that of the wild type strain. On the other hand, the other selected mutant strains (DS, M4-3) from colchicine treatment showed 20$\sim$30% faster cell growth than the wild type strain.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.47-52
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• 1995

Since the original productivity of new aminopeptidase M inhibitors MR-387A and B by Streptomyces sp. SL-387 (KCTC 0102BP) was not enough for further chemical and biological evaluation, mutation of parent strain by the treatment of N-methyl-N'-nitro-N-nitrosoguanidine was performed in order to obtain a clone with greater inhibitory activity. Mutant N-3 was selected due to a 6-fold greater productivity (40 $\mu$g/ml) than that of the wild type(6.7 $\mu$g/ml). This mutant was resistant to 3,4-dehydro-DL-proline, an antimetabolite of proline, with 25 $\mu$g/ml of minimum inhibitory concentration. Furthermore, the characteristic morphological change from spiral spore chain in wild type to straight in mutant was observed. An aminopeptidase M nhibitor different from MR-387A and B was isolated from the culture broth of the mutant. This inhibitor was composed of 2 proline, 1 valine, and an unknown amino acid which is presumably 3-amino-4-phenylbutanoic acid. IC$_{50}$ value (89.1 $\MU$g/ml) of the purified inhibitor was lower than that of other inhibitors, which may be due to the absence of 2(S)-hydroxyl group within the structure of 3-amino-4-phenyl- butanoic acid.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.560-565
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• 1990

When protoplasts from auxotrophie mutant of Trkhoderma koningii CUT121(Lys-, Met-) were mixed with isolated nuclei of wild type T. koningii ATCC 261 13 and treated with PEG solution, protrophic colonies were produced with frequency of more than 30 percent. One of segregants from prototrophic colonies showed increased xylanase activity and other polysaccharide-hydrolyzing activities comparable to those of wild type strain. Through measurement of DNA contents, induced segregation, and analysis of isozyme patterns, it was revealed that the prototrophic colonies were transformants resulted from exchange of genetic materials between the two kinds of nuclei used. These results suggest that nuclei transfer technique is more efficient than conventional protoplast fusion technique for strain improvement of Trichoderma species.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.19 no.9
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• pp.869-872
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• 2009

The cyclic undecapeptide cyclosporin A (CyA), one of the most valuable immunosuppressive drugs, is produced nonribosomally by a multifunctional cyclosporin synthetase enzyme complex by the filamentous fungus Tolypocladium niveum. To increase CyA productivity by wild-type T. niveum (ATCC 34921), random mutagenesis was first performed using an antifungal agar-plug colony assay (APCA) selection approach. This generated a mutant strain producing more than 9-fold greater CyA than the wild-type strain. Additionally, a foreign bacterial gene, Vitreoscilla hemoglobin gene (VHb), was transformed via protoplast regeneration and its transcription was confirmed by RT-PCR in the UV-irradiated mutant cell. This led to an additional 33.5% increase of CyA production. Although most protoplast-regenerated T. niveum transformants tend to lose CyA productivity, the optimized combination of random mutagenesis and protoplast transformation described here should be an efficient strategy to generate a commercially valuable, yet metabolite low-producing, fungal species, such as CyA-producing T. niveum.

• BMB Reports
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.432-443
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• 1998

The poliovirus Sabin 1 strain has features that make it a particularly attractive live recombinant mucosal vaccine vehicle. Sabin 1 cDNA was manipulated to have multiple cloning sites and a viral specific 3C-protease cutting site at the N-terminal end of the polyprotein. The gene for the N-terminal 169 amino acids of the HIV-1 p24 was cloned into the multiple cloning site of the manipulated Sabin cDNA. A recombinant progeny virus was produced from HeLa cells when it was transfected with the RNA synthesized from the p24-Sabin chimeric cDNA. The recombinant progeny virus expresses substantial amounts of the HIV-1 p24 protein, which was clearly detected in the infected cell lysates and culture supernatants in Western blot experiments with rabbit anti-p24 serum and AIDS patients' sera. Differing from the Mahoney strain, the recombinant Sabin 1 poliovirus maintained the foreign gene stably during the subsequent passages. Replication capacity was about 1 to 1.5 log lower than that of the wild-type Sabin 1. Other physicochemical stability characteristics of the recombinant virus were similar to that of the wild-type Sabin 1. These results suggest that the manipulated Sabin 1 poliovirus can be used as a live viral vaccine vector for the development of mucosal vaccines.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.66-71
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• 2005

Doxorubicin is a clinically important anticancer polyketide compound that is typically produced by Streptomyces peucetius var. caesius. To improve doxorubicin productivity by S. peucetius, a doxorubicin pathway-specific regulatory gene, dnrI, was cloned into a high-copy-number plasmid containing a catechol promoter system. The S. peucetius containing the recombinant plasmid exhibited approximately 9.5-fold higher doxorubicin productivity compared with the wild-type S. peucetius. The doxorubicin productivity by this recombinant S. peucetius strain was further improved through the optimization of culture media composition. Based on the Fractional Factorial Design (FFD), cornstarch, $K_2HPO_4$, and $MgSO_4$ were identified to be the key factors influencing doxorubicin productivity. The Response Surface Method (RSM) results based on 20 independent culture conditions with varying amounts of key factors predicted the highest theoretical doxorubicin productivity of 11.1 mg/l with corn starch of 46.33 g/l, $K_2HPO_4$ of 4.63 g/l, and $MgSO_4$ of 9.26 g/l. The doxorubicin productivity of the recombinant S. peucetius strain with the RSM-based optimized culture condition was experimentally verified to be 11.46 mg/l, which was approximately 30.8-fold higher productivity compared with the wild-type S. peucetius without culture media optimization.

• Mycobiology
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.353-360
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• 2014

Makgeolli is a traditional Korean alcoholic beverage. The flavor of makgeolli is primarily determined by metabolic products such as free sugars, amino acids, organic acids, and aromatic compounds, which are produced during the fermentation of raw materials by molds and yeasts present in nuruk, a Korean fermentation starter. In this study, makgeolli was brewed using the wild yeast strain Saccharomyces cerevisiae Y98-5, and temporal changes in the metabolites during fermentation were analyzed by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole-time-of-flight mass spectrometry. The resultant data were analyzed by partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA). Various metabolites, including amino acids, organic acids, sugar alcohols, small peptides, and nucleosides, were obviously altered by increasing the fermentation period. Changes in these metabolites allowed us to distinguish among makgeolli samples with different fermentation periods (1, 2, 3, 6, 7, and 8 days) on a PLS-DA score plot. In the makgeolli brewed in this study, the amounts of tyrosine ($463.13{\mu}g/mL$) and leucine ($362.77{\mu}g/mL$) were high. Therefore, our results indicate that monitoring the changes in metabolites during makgeolli fermentation might be important for brewing makgeolli with good nutritional quality.

• Animal cells and systems
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.637-640
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• 1997

Raf-1, a cytoplasmic serine/threonine protein kinase, serves as a central intermediate in many signaling pathways in cell proliferation, differentiation, and development. In this study, we investigated that B-raf, Drosophila homolog of the human c-raf-1, is involved in ultraviolet (UV) responsive events by using hypomorphic mutant $D-raf^{c110}$ and Draf-lacZ transgenic fly. At first, effect of UV damage on the survival of wild-type and $D-raf^{C110}$ strains was examined. In terms of $1/LD_{50}$ value, the relative ratio of UV sensitivities of wild-type versus $D-raf^{C110}$ strain was 1 : 2.2. By using quantitative $\beta$-galactosidase activity analysis, transcriptional activity of the D-raf gene promoter was also examined in UV-irradiated Draf-lacZ transgenic larvae. UV irradiation increased the expression of lacZ reporter gene in Draf-lacZ transgenic fly. However, in $D-raf^{C110}$ strain the transcriptional activity of D-raf gene promoter by UV irradiation was extensively reduced. Results obtained in this study suggest that D-raf plays a role in UV response, leading to better survival of Drosophila to UV damage.

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.228-234
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• 2005

Caenorhabditis elegans him-6 mutants, which show a high incidence of males and partial embryonic lethality, are defective in the orthologue of human Bloom's syndrome protein (BLM). When strain him-6(e1104) containing a missense him-6 mutation was irradiated with ${\gamma}$-rays during germ cell development or embryogenesis, embryonic lethality was higher than in the wild type, suggesting a critical function of the wild type gene in mitotic and pachytene stage germ cells as well as in early embryos. Even in the absence of ${\gamma}$-irradiation, apoptosis was elevated in the germ cells of the him-6 strain and this increase was dependent on a functional p53 homologue (CEP-1), suggesting that spontaneous DNA damage accumulates due to him-6 deficiency. However, induction of germline apoptosis by ionizing radiation was not significantly affected by the deficiency, indicating that HIM-6 has no role in the induction of apoptosis by exogenous DNA damage. We conclude that the C. elegans BLM orthologue is involved in DNA repair in promeiotic cells undergoing homologous recombination, as well as in actively dividing germline and somatic cells.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.401-409
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• 2019

Heat-resistant microbial hosts are required for bioprocess development using high cell density cultivations at the industrial scale. We report that the thermotolerance of Escherichia coli can be enhanced by overexpressing ybeD, which was known to encode a hypothetical protein of unknown function. In the wild-type E. coli BL21(DE3), ybeD transcription level increased over five-fold when temperature was increased from $37^{\circ}C$ to either $42^{\circ}C$ or $46^{\circ}C$. To study the function of ybeD, a deletion strain and an overexpression strain were constructed. At $46^{\circ}C$, in comparison to the wild type, the ybeD-deletion reduced cell growth half-fold, and the ybeD-overexpression promoted cell growth over two-fold. The growth enhancement by ybeD-overexpression was much more pronounced at $46^{\circ}C$ than $37^{\circ}C$. The ybeD-overexpression was also effective in other E. coli strains of MG1655, W3110, DH10B, and BW25113. These findings reveal that ybeD gene plays an important role in enduring high-temperature stress, and that ybeD-overexpression can be a prospective strategy to develop thermotolerant microbial hosts.