• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.115-121
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• 1992

In order to broaden the spectrum of substrate utilization of a Gram negative bacterium Zymomonas mobilis which has a great potential as an industrial ethanol producing microorganism, cloning of $\alpha$-amylase gene into Z. mobilis ZM4 was tried. The $\alpha$-amylase gene was isolated from Bacillus stearothermophilus. By Southern blot analysis, it was proven that the $\alpha$-amylase gene fragment was originated from a naturally occuring plasmid of B. stearothermophilus ATCC 31195. To place $\alpha$-amylase gene under the control of Z. mobilis promoter, two different Z. mobilis expression vectors, pZA26 and pLOI204, were used. The truncated $\alpha$-amylase gene was then introduced into these vectors. Both qualitative and quantitative activities of $\alpha$-amylase were observed in Z. mobilis cells harboring these plasmids with the $\alpha$-amylase gene inserted. Gas chromatographic analysis of ethanol showed that one of the Z. mobilis transconjugants was capable of producing 67 mM ethanol from rich medium(RM) containing 5% soluble starch as a sole carbon source.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.306-311
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• 2002

O-linked N-acetylglucosamine (O-GlcNAc) is an abundant posttranslationally modified compound in eukaryotic cells. Human O-GlcNAc transferase (OGT) was produced as a maltose binding protein (MBP) fusion protein, which showed significant catalytic activity to modify recombinant Sp1, transcription factor. To facilitate the production of O-GlcNAc modified proteins, instead of using the tedious in vitro glycosylation reaction or expression in eukaryotic cells, a MBP-fusion OGT expression vector (pACYC184-MBPOGT) was constructed using pACYC184 plasmid, which could coexist with general prokaryotic expression vectors containing ColE1 origin. By cotransforming pACYC184-MBPOGT and pGEX-2T vectors into Escherichia coli BL21, intracellular O- GlcNAcylated proteins could be obtained by a simple purification procedure. It is expected that this may be a useful tool for production of O-GlcNAc modified proteins.

• Journal of Plant Biology
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.77-83
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• 1994

DNA uptake in dry embryos of rice by DNA imbibition was detected by monitoring the expression of chimeric vectors. The selective markers of expression vectors used were ${\beta}-glucuronidase$ ronidase (GUS) and hygromycin phosphotransferase (HPT) genes under the control of CaMV35 S promoter. Frequency of transient expression of the foreign gene was generally 30-50% varying according to the types of vectors and rice cultivars. Dot blot analysis and DNA sequence analysis of inverse polymerase chain reaction products showed that selected rice in hygromycin B (HmB) medium had HPT gene and CaMV35S promoter DNA sequence in genomic DNA of rice. To investigate what ratio of rice having two marker genes simultaneously as rice embryos imbibed the vector DNA having two HPT and GUS gene, transform ants selected in lImB medium were subjected to PCR for GUS gene. It was shown that about 90 percentage of surviving ones in HmB medium had GUS gene.S gene.

• Animal cells and systems
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.249-258
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• 1998

Obesity, one of the most common metabolic diseases in industrial countries is characterized by an increase in the number or size of adipocytes. In an effort to create transgenic mouse models for the study of obesity we developed a novel technique in which adipose tissue can be ablated genetically at will, at any specific developmental stage and/or physiological condition, by the treatment of ganciclovir. We made a series of adipocytespecific expression vectors using minimal regulatory regions of brown adipocyte-specific uncoupling protein (UCP-1) gene and adipocyte-specific aP2 gene, and then analyzed their expression characteristics in cultured cell lines. When both constructs pUCP-LacZ and paP2-LacZ were transfected transiently into differentiating 3T3-L1 (pre-while adipocytes) and HIB-1B (pre-brown adipocytes) cell lines in vitro and then monitored by X-gal staining of cells, these regulatory regions were sufficient to show proper differentiation stage-specific expression in adipocvtes. To confirm that adipocytes expressing HSV-TK controlled by these minimal requlatory elements are sufficient to kill themselves with ganciclovir treatment pUCP-TK and paP2-TK expression constructs were transfected stably into HIB-1B and 3T3-L1 cells, respectively, and their ganciclovir sensitivities were tested during in vitro differentiation of cells. As expected more than 80% of cells were dead by the 7th day of treatment with ganciclovir while negative control cells were not affected at all. The data suqqest that the constructed vectors are suitable for obtaining novel obese transqenic models based on a conditional genetic tissue ablation method.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.18 no.10
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• pp.1634-1640
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• 2008

This study was focused on the screening of valuable genetic resources, such as promoters from metagenome, and describes a promoter trapping system with a bidirectional probe concept, which can select promoters or operons from various biological resources including metagenomic DNA. A pair of reporters, GFP and DsRed, facing the opposite direction without promoters, is an effective system that can function regardless of the direction of inserted promoters. The feasibility of this system was tested for the isolation of constitutively expressed promoters in E. coli from a soil metagenome, resulting in a potential pool of various promoters for practical application. The analyses of structural organization of the trapped genes demonstrated that constitutively expressible promoters in E. coli were broadly distributed within the metagenome, and suggested that some promoters were useful for the construction of expression vectors. Based on these observations, three constitutive promoters were employed in the expression vector system and their potentials for practical application were evaluated in terms of expression level, protein solubility, and effects on host growth.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.42-48
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• 1998

In order to maximize the secretory expression of human serum albumin (HSA) in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a series of HSA expression vectors were constructed with a combination of different promoters, 5' untranslated regions (5'UTR), and secretion signal sequences. The expression vector composed of the galactose-inducible promoter GALl0, the natural 5'UTR, and the natural signal sequence of HSA directed the most efficient expression and secretion of HSA among the constructed vectors when introduced into several S. cerevisiae strains. Although the major form of HSA expressed and secreted in the yeast transformants was the mature form of 66 kDa, the truncated form of 45 kDa was also detected both in the cell extract and in the culture supernatant. The level of the intact HSA protein in the culture supernatant reached up to 30 mg/l at 24 h of cultivation in a shake-flask culture but began to decrease afterwards, indicating that the secreted HSA protein was unstable in a prolonged culture of yeast.

• The Plant Pathology Journal
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.371-376
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• 2016

Grapevine Algerian latent virus (GALV) is a member of the genus Tombusvirus in the Tombusviridae and infects not only woody perennial grapevine plant but also herbaceous Nicotiana benthamiana plant. In this study, we developed GALV-based gene expression and virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) vectors in N. benthamiana. The GALV coat protein deletion vector, pGMG, was applied to express the reporter gene, green fluorescence protein (GFP), but the expression of GFP was not detected due to the necrotic cell death on the infiltrated leaves. The p19 silencing suppressor of GALV was engineered to inactivate its expression and GFP was successfully expressed with unrelated silencing suppressor, HC-Pro, from soybean mosaic virus. The pGMG vector was used to knock down magnesium chelatase (ChlH) gene in N. benthamaina and the silencing phenotype was clearly observed on systemic leaves. Altogether, the GALV-derived vector is expected to be an attractive tool for useful gene expression and VIGS vectors in grapevine as well as N. benthamiana.

• Proceedings of the Zoological Society Korea Conference
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• 2000.10a
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• pp.247.3-248
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• 2000

No Abstract, See Full Text

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.357-362
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• 2007

There is an increasing demand for high throughput (HTP) methods for gene analysis on a genome-wide scale. However, the current repertoire of HTP detection methodologies allows only a limited range of cellular phenotypes to be studied. We have constructed two HTP-optimized expression vectors generated from the red fluorescent reporter protein (RFP) gene. These vectors produce RFP-tagged target proteins in a multiple expression system using gateway cloning technology (GCT). The RFP tag was fused with the cloned genes, thereby allowing us localize the expressed proteins in mammalian cells. The effectiveness of the vectors was evaluated using an HTP-screening system. Sixty representative human C2 domains were tagged with RFP and overexpressed in HiB5 neuronal progenitor cells, and we studied in detail two C2 domains that promoted the neuronal differentiation of HiB5 cells. Our results show that the two vectors developed in this study are useful for functional gene analysis using an HTP-screening system on a genome-wide scale.

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.19-24
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• 2009

The goal of this study was to create a novel baculovirus expression system that does not require recombinant virus purification steps. Transfection of insect cells with transfer vectors containing barnase under control of the Cotesia plutellae bracovirus (CpBV) promoters ORF3004 or ORF3005 reduced cell growth. Co-transfection with bApGOZA DNA yielded no recombinant viruses and nonrecombinant backgrounds. To further investigate the detrimental effects of barnase on insect cells, two recombinant bacmids harboring the barnase gene under control of the CpBV promoters, namely bAcFast-3004ProBarnase and bAcFast-3005ProBarnase, were constructed. While no viral replication was observed when only the recombinant bacmids were transfected, recombinant viruses were generated when the bacmids were co-transfected with the transfer vector, pAcUWPolh, through substitution of the barnase gene with the native polyhedrin gene by homologous recombination. Moreover, no non-recombinant backgrounds were detected from unpurified recombinant stocks using PCR analysis. These results indicate that CpBV promoters can be used to improve baculovirus expression vectors by means of lethal gene expression under the control of these promoters.