• Title/Summary/Keyword: active machinery

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Dealing Naturally with Stumbling Blocks on Highways and Byways of TRAIL Induced Signaling

  • Rana, Aamir;Attar, Rukset;Qureshi, Muhammad Zahid;Gasparri, Maria Luisa;Donato, Violante Di;Ali, Ghulam Muhammad;Farooqi, Ammad Ahmad
    • Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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    • v.15 no.19
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    • pp.8041-8046
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    • 2014
  • In-depth analysis of how TRAIL signals through death receptors to induce apoptosis in cancer cells using high throughput technologies has added new layers of knowledge. However, the wealth of information has also highlighted the fact that TRAIL induced apoptosis may be impaired as evidenced by experimental findings obtained from TRAIL resistant cancer cell lines. Overwhelmingly, increasing understanding of TRAIL mediated apoptosis has helped in identifying synthetic and natural compounds which can restore TRAIL induced apoptosis via functionalization of either extrinsic or intrinsic pathways. Increasingly it is being realized that biologically active phytochemicals modulate TRAIL induced apoptosis, as evidenced by cell-based studies. In this review we have attempted to provide an overview of how different phytonutrients have shown efficacy in restoring apoptosis in TRAIL resistant cancer cells. We partition this review into how the TRAIL mediated signaling landscape has broadened over the years and how TRAIL induced signaling machinery crosstalks with autophagic protein networks. Subsequently, we provide a generalized view of considerable biological activity of coumarins against a wide range of cancer cell lines and how coumarins (psoralidin and esculetin) isolated from natural sources have improved TRAIL induced apoptosis in resistant cancer cells. We summarize recent updates on piperlongumine, phenethyl isothiocyanate and luteolin induced activation of TRAIL mediated apoptosis. The data obtained from pre-clinical studies will be helpful in translation of information from benchtop to the bedside.

A NUMERICAL STUDY ON THERMAL DESIGN OF A LARGE-AREA HOT PLATE FOR THERMAL NANOIMPRINT LITHOGRAPHY (나노임프린트 장비용 대면적 열판 열설계를 위한 수치 연구)

  • Park, G.J.;Lee, J.J.;Kwak, H.S.
    • Journal of computational fluids engineering
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    • v.21 no.2
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    • pp.90-98
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    • 2016
  • A numerical study is conducted on thermal performance of a large-area hot plate specially designed as a heating and cooling tool for thermal nanoimprint lithography process. The hot plate has a dimension of $240mm{\times}240mm{\times}20mm$, in which a series of cartridge heaters and cooling holes are installed. The material is stainless steel selected for enduring the high molding pressure. A numerical model based on the ANSYS Fluent is employed to predict the thermal behavior of the hot plate both in heating and cooling phases. The PID thermal control of the device is modeled by adding user defined functions. The results of numerical computation demonstrate that the use of cartridge heaters provides sufficient heat-up performance and the active liquid cooling in the cooling holes provides the required cool-down performance. However, a crucial technical issue is raised that the proposed design poses a large temperature non-uniformity in the steady heating phase and in the transient cooling phase. As a remedy, a new hot plate in which heat pipes are installed in the cooling holes is considered. The numerical results show that the installation of heat pipes could enhance the temperature uniformity both in the heating and cooling phases.

Design of a Wind Tunnel for Plug Seedlings Production under Artificial Light and Aerodynamic Characteristics above Plug Stand (인공광하의 공정육묘용 풍동 설계 및 공정묘 개체군상의 공기역학적 특성)

  • 김용현;고재풍수
    • Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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    • v.21 no.4
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    • pp.429-435
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    • 1996
  • A wind tunnel consisting of two air flow conditioners with polycarbonate pipes, a plant growth room, a suction fan and fan controller, and fluorescent lamps, was designed to investigate the interactions between the growth of plug seedlings under artificial light and their Physical environments. Light transmissivities in the plant growth room based on the photosynthetic photon flux density and photosynthetically active radiation was appeared to be 96.3% and 96.8%, respectively. Measurement showed a uniformity in the vertical profiles of air current speed at the middle and rear regions of plug trays in wind tunnel. This result indicated that the development of a wind tunnel based on the design criteria of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers was adequate. Air current speed inside the plug stand was significantly decreased due to the resistance by the leaves of plug seedlings and boundary layer developed over and below the plug stand. Driving force to facilitate the diffusion of gas inside the plug stand might be regarded as extremely low. Aerodynamic characteristics above the plug stand under artificial light were investigated. As the air current speed increased, zero plane displacement decreased but roughness length and frictional velocity increased. Zero plane displacement linearly increased with the average height of plug seedlings. The wind tunnel developed in this study would be useful to investigate the effects of air current speed on the microclimate over and inside the plug stand and to collect basic data for a large-scale plug production under artificial light in a semi-closed ecosystem.

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Current Mechanistic Approaches to the Chemoprevention of Cancer

  • Steele, Vernon E.
    • BMB Reports
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    • v.36 no.1
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    • pp.78-81
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    • 2003
  • The prevention of cancer is one of the most important public health and medical practices of the $21^{st}$ century. We have made much progress in this new emerging field, but so much remains to be accomplished before widespread use and practice become common place. Cancer chemoprevention encompasses the concepts of inhibition, reversal, and retardation of the cancer process. This process, called carcinogenesis, requires 20-40 years to reach the endpoint called invasive cancer. It typically follows multiple, diverse and complex pathways in a stochastic process of clonal evolution. These pathways appear amenable to inhibition, reversal or retardation at various points. We must therefore identify key pathways in the evolution of the cancer cell that can be exploited to prevent this carcinogenesis process. Basic research is identifying many genetic lesions and epigenetic processes associated with the progression of precancer to invasive disease. Many of these early precancerous lesions favor cell division over quiescence and protect cells against apoptosis when signals are present. Many oncogenes are active during early development and are reactivated in adulthood by aberrant gene promoting errors. Normal regulatory genes are mutated, making them insensitive to normal regulatory signals. Tumor suppressor genes are deleted or mutated rendering them inactive. Thus there is a wide range of defects in cellular machinery which can lead to evolution of the cancer phenotype. Mistakes may not have to appear in a certain order for cells to progress along the cancer pathway. To conquer this diverse disease, we must attack multiple key pathways at once for a predetermined period of time. Thus, agent combination prevention strategies are essential to decrease cancer morbidity. Furthermore, each cancer type may require custom combination of prevention strategies to be successful.

Molecular determinants of the host specificity by Xanthomonas spp.

  • Heu, Sunggi;Choi, Min-Seon;Park, Hyoung-Joon;Lee, Seung-Don;Ra, Dong-Soo
    • Proceedings of the Korean Society of Plant Pathology Conference
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    • 2004.10a
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    • pp.65-67
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    • 2004
  • During initial interactions of bacteria with their host plants, most plants recognize the bacterial infections and repel the pathogen by plant defense mechanism. The most active plant defense mechanism is the hypersensitive response (HR) which is the localized induced cell death in the plant at the site of infection by a pathogen. A primary locus induced in gram-negative phytopathogenic bacteria during this initial interaction is the Hrp locus. The Hrp locus is composed of a cluster of genes that encodes the bacteral Type 111 machinery that is involved in the secretion and translocation of effector proteins to the plant cell. DNA sequence analysis of hrp gene in phytopathogenic bacteria has revealed a Hrp pathogenicity is]and (PAI) with a tripartite mosaic structure. For many gram-negative pathogenic bacteria, colonization of the host's tissue depends on the type III protein secretion system (TTSS) which secrets and translocates effector proteins into the host cell. Effectors can be divided into several groups including broad host range effectors, host specific effectors, disease specific effectors, and effectors inhibit host defenses. The role of effectors carrying LRR domain in plant resistance is very elusive since most known plant resistance gene carry LRR domain. Host specific effectors such as several avr gene products are involved in the determination of the host specificity. Almost all the phytopathogenic Xanthomonas spp. carry avrBs1, avrBs2, and avrBs3 homologs. Some strains of X. oryzae pv. oryzae carry more than 10 copies of avrBs3 homologs. However, the functions of all those avr genes in host specificity are not characterized well.;

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Global DNA Methylation of Porcine Embryos during Preimplantation Development

  • Yeo, S.E.;Kang, Y.K.;Koo, D.B.;Han, J.S.;Yu, K.;Kim, C.H.;Park, H.;Chang, W.K.;Lee, K.K.;Han, Y.M.
    • Korean Journal of Animal Reproduction
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    • v.27 no.4
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    • pp.309-315
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    • 2003
  • DNA methylation at CpG sites, which is a epigenetic modification, is associated with gene expression without change of DNA sequences. During early mouse embryogenesis, dynamic changes of DNA methylation occur. In this study, DNA methylation patterns of porcine embryos produced in vivo and in vitro were examined at various developmental stages by the immunocytochemical staining method. Interestingly, active demethylation was not observed on the paternal pronucleus of porcine zygotes. However, differences were detected in the passive demethylation process between in vivo and in vitro embryos. There was no change in the DNA methylation state until the blastocyst stage of in vivo embryos, whereas partial demethylation was observed in several blastomeres from a 4 cell stage to a morula stage of in vitro embryos. The whole genome of inner cell mass (ICM) and trophectoderm (TE) cells in porcine blastocysts were evenly methylated without de novo methylation. Our findings demonstrate that genome-wide demethylation does not occur in pig embryos during preimplantation development unlike murine and bovine embryos. It indicates that the machinery regulating epigenetic reprogramming may be different between species.

Activity of Early Gene Promoters from a Korean Chlorella Virus Isolate in Transformed Chlorella Algae

  • Jung Heoy-Kyung;Kim Gun-Do;Choi Tae-Jin
    • Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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    • v.16 no.6
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    • pp.952-960
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    • 2006
  • As a unicellular green alga that possesses many of the metabolic pathways present in higher plants, Chlorelia offers many advantages for expression of heterologous proteins. Since strong and constitutive promoters are necessary for efficient expression in heterologous expression systems, the development of such promoters for use in the Chlorella system was the aim of this study. Proteins encoded by the early genes of algal viruses are expressed before viral replication, probably by the host transcriptional machinery, and the promoters of these genes might be useful for heterologous expression in Chlorella. In this study, putative promoter regions of DNA polymerase, ATP-dependent DNA ligase, and chitinase genes were amplified from eight Korean Chlorella virus isolates by using primer sets designed based on the sequence of the genome of PBCV-1, the prototype of the Phycodnaviridae. These putative promoter regions were found to contain several cis-acting elements for transcription factors, including the TATA, CAAT, NTBBF1, GATA, and CCAAT boxes. The amplified promoter regions were placed into Chlorella transformation vectors containing a green fluorescence protein (GFP) reporter gene and the Sh ble gene for phleomycin resistance. C. vulgaris protoplasts were transformed and then selected with phleomycin. The GFP fluorescence intensities of cells transformed with chitinase, DNA polymerase, and DNA ligase gene promoter-GFP fusion constructs were 101.5, 100.8, and 95.8%, respectively, of that of CaMV 35S-GFP-transformed Chlorella cells. These results demonstrate that these viral promoters are active in transformed Chlorella.

Synthesis and Photocatalytic Activity of Ag Spot-coated TiO2-SrO Composite Powders (나노 Ag spot-coated TiO2-SrO 복합분체의 합성과 광촉매 활성 평가)

  • Han, Jae-Kil;Kim, Hyeong-Chul;Hong, Won-Seok;Choi, Sung-Chang
    • Korean Journal of Materials Research
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    • v.18 no.7
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    • pp.389-393
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    • 2008
  • Nano-sized $TiO_2$-60 wt% SrO composite powders were synthesized by a sol-gel method using titanium isopropoxide and $Sr(OH)_2\;{\cdot}\;8H_2O$ as precursors. 3, -5, -7 wt%Ag spot-coated $TiO_2$-60 wt% SrO composite powders were synthesized by a Ag electroless deposition method using $TiO_2$-60 wt% SrO composite powders calcined at $1050^{\circ}C$, which mainly exhibited the $SrTiO_3$phase. However, a small number of rutile $TiO_2$, $Sr_2TiO_4$ and $SrO_2$ phases were also detected. In the Ag spot-coated powders synthesized by electroless deposition, nano-sized particles about 5-25 nm in diameter adhered to the $TiO_2$-60 wt% SrO composite powders. The photocatalytic activity of Ag spot-coated $TiO_2$-SrO and $TiO_2$-SrO composite powders for degradation of phenol showed that all of $TiO_2$-SrO composite powders were highly active under UV light irradiation. 7 wt%Ag spot-coated $TiO_2$-60wt.%SrO composite powders had a relatively higher photocatalytic activity than did $TiO_2$-SrO composite powders under visible light.

Effect of Mutation in α-COP, A Subunit of the COPI Vesicle, on Cell Wall Biogenesis in Fungi (COPI 소낭 구성체인 α-COP의 돌연변이가 균류 세포벽 합성에 미치는 영향)

  • Lee, Hwan-Hee;Park, Hee-Moon
    • The Korean Journal of Mycology
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    • v.35 no.1
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    • pp.1-10
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    • 2007
  • The cell wall is essential for the survival and osmotic integrity of fungal cells. It is the framework to which biologically active proteins such as cell adhesion molecules and hydrolytic enzymes are attached or within which they act. Recently it was shown that mutations in ${\alpha}-COP$, a subunit of COPI vesicle, is responsible for the thermo-sensitive osmo-fragile phenotype of fungi, such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Aspergillus nidulans, and suggested that ${\alpha}-COP$ may play a crucial role in translocation of protein(s) of the ${\beta}-1,3-gulcan$ synthase complex and cell wall proteins, thus may contribute to the maintenance of cell wall integrity. In this review, we summarized the relationship between the intra-cellular protein translocation machinery, especially the ${\alpha}-COP$ of COPI vesicle, and cell wall biogenesis in fungi. We also discussed potential use of secretory mutants in basic and applied research of the fungal cell walls.

Defect Detection of Carbon Steel Pipe Weld Area using Infrared Thermography Camera (적외선 열화상 카메라를 이용한 탄소강관 용접부 결함검출)

  • Kwon, DaeJu;Jung, NaRa;Kim, JaeYeol
    • Tribology and Lubricants
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    • v.30 no.2
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    • pp.124-129
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    • 2014
  • The piping system accounts for a large portion of the machinery structure of a plant, and is considered as a very important mechanical structure for plant safety. Accordingly, it is used in most energy plants in the nuclear, gas, and heavy chemical industries. In particular, the piping system for a nuclear plant is generally complicated and uses the reactor and its cooling system. The piping equipment is exposed to diverse loads such as weight, temperature, pressure, and seismic load from pipes and fluids, and is used to transfer steam, oil, and gas. In ultrasound infrared thermography, which is an active thermography technology, a 15-100 kHz ultrasound wave is applied to the subject, and the resulting heat from the defective parts is measured using a thermography camera. Because this technique can inspect a large area simultaneously and detect defects such as cracks and delamination in real time, it is used to detect defects in the new and renewable energy, car, and aerospace industries, and recently, in piping defect detection. In this study, ultrasound infrared thermography is used to detect information for the diagnosis of nuclear equipment and structures. Test specimens are prepared with piping materials for nuclear plants, and the optimally designed ultrasound horn and ultrasound vibration system is used to determine damages on nuclear plant piping and detect defects. Additionally, the detected images are used to improve the reliability of the surface and internal defect detection for nuclear piping materials, and their field applicability and reliability is verified.