• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.61 no.1
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• pp.78-83
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• 2023

The use of an effective antimalarial drug is the cornerstone of malaria control. However, the development and spread of resistant Plasmodium falciparum strains have placed the global eradication of malaria in serious jeopardy. Molecular marker analysis constitutes the hallmark of the monitoring of Plasmodium drug-resistance. This study included 96 P. falciparum PCR-positive samples from southern Somalia. The P. falciparum chloroquine resistance transporter gene had high frequencies of K76T, A220S, Q271E, N326S, and R371I point mutations. The N86Y and Y184F mutant alleles of the P. falciparum multidrug resistance 1 gene were present in 84.7 and 62.4% of the isolates, respectively. No mutation was found in the P. falciparum Kelch-13 gene. This study revealed that chloroquine resistance markers are present at high frequencies, while the parasite remains sensitive to artemisinin (ART). The continuous monitoring of ART-resistant markers and in vitro susceptibility testing are strongly recommended to track resistant strains in real time.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.125-142
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• 2021

The POCT (point-of-care test) sensing that has been a fast-developing field is expected to be a next generation technology in health care. The POCT sensors for the detection of proteins, small molecules and especially nucleic acids have lately attracted considerable attention. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the POCT methods are required to follow the ASSURED guidelines (Affordable, Sensitive, Specific, User- friendly, Robust and rapid, Equipment-free, Deliverable to all people who need the test). Recently, several CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) based diagnostic techniques using the sensitive gene recognition function of CRISPR have been reported. CRISPR/Cas (Cas, CRISPR associated protein) systems based detection technology is the most innovative gene analysis technology that is following the ASSURED guidelines. It is being re-emerged as a powerful diagnostic tool that can detect nucleic acids due to its characteristics that enable rapid, sensitive and specific analyses of nucleic acid. The first CRISPR-based diagnosis begins with the discovery of the additional function of Cas13a. The enzymatic cleavage occurs when the conjugate of Cas protein and CRISPR RNA (crRNA) detect a specific complementary sequence of the target sequence. Enzymatic cleavage occurs on not only the target sequence, but also all surrounding non-target single-stranded RNAs. This discovery was immediately utilized as a biosensor, and numerous sensor studies using CRISPR have been reported since then. In this review, the concept of CRISPR, the characteristics of the Cas protein required for CRISPR diagnosis, the current research trends of CRISPR diagnostic technology, and some aspects to be improved in the future are covered.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.31 no.8
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• pp.999-1009
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• 2004

As a new approach to the diagnosis of cancers, bioinformatics attracts great interest these days. Machine teaming techniques have produced valuable results, but the field of medicine requires not only highly accurate classifiers but also the effective analysis and interpretation of them. Since gene expression data in bioinformatics consist of tens of thousands of features, it is nearly impossible to represent their relations directly. In this paper, we propose a method composed of a feature selection method and genetic programming. Rank-based feature selection is adopted to select useful features and genetic programming based arithmetic operators is used to generate classification rules with features selected. Experimental results on Lymphoma cancer dataset, in which the proposed method obtained 96.6% test accuracy as well as useful classification rules, have shown the validity of the proposed method.

• Journal of Gastric Cancer
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.129-135
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• 2013

Gastric cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. In advanced and metastatic gastric cancer, the conventional chemotherapy with limited efficacy shows an overall survival period of about 10 months. Patient specific and effective treatments known as personalized cancer therapy is of significant importance. Advances in high-throughput technologies such as microarray and next generation sequencing for genes, protein expression profiles and oncogenic signaling pathways have reinforced the discovery of treatment targets and personalized treatments. However, there are numerous challenges from cancer target discoveries to practical clinical benefits. Although there is a flood of biomarkers and target agents, only a minority of patients are tested and treated accordingly. Numerous molecular target agents have been under investigation for gastric cancer. Currently, targets for gastric cancer include the epidermal growth factor receptor family, mesenchymal-epithelial transition factor axis, and the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase-AKT-mammalian target of rapamycin pathways. Deeper insights of molecular characteristics for gastric cancer has enabled the molecular classification of gastric cancer, the diagnosis of gastric cancer, the prediction of prognosis, the recognition of gastric cancer driver genes, and the discovery of potential therapeutic targets. Not only have we deeper insights for the molecular diversity of gastric cancer, but we have also prospected both affirmative potentials and hurdles to molecular diagnostics. New paradigm of transdisciplinary team science, which is composed of innovative explorations and clinical investigations of oncologists, geneticists, pathologists, biologists, and bio-informaticians, is mandatory to recognize personalized target therapy.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.116-125
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• 2016

Background: Microfluidics is of considerable importance in food and agricultural industries. Microfluidics processes low volumes of fluids in channels with extremely small dimensions of tens of micrometers. It enables the miniaturization of analytical devices and reductions in cost and turnaround times. This allows automation, high-throughput analysis, and processing in food and agricultural applications. Purpose: This review aims to provide information on the applications of microfluidics in the agro-food sector to overcome limitations posed by conventional technologies. Results: Microfluidics contributes to medical diagnosis, biological analysis, drug discovery, chemical synthesis, biotechnology, gene sequencing, and ecology. Recently, the applications of microfluidics in food and agricultural industries have increased. A few examples of these applications include food safety analysis, food processing, and animal production. This study examines the fundamentals of microfluidics including fabrication, control, applications, and future trends of microfluidics in the agro-food sector. Conclusions: Future research efforts should focus on developing a small portable platform with modules for fluid handling, sample preparation, and signal detection electronics.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 2006.11a
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• pp.427-430
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• 2006

Clustering for gene expression data without filtering out noise genes may be distorted or derived inappropriate inference. Identifying significant genes and deleting noise before major analysis is necessary fur meaningful discovery from genes expression pattern. We proposed a new method of finding significant genes using factor analysis which is done on transposed data matrix. We construct significance score that is sum of factor loadings for declared significant number of factor, and set threshold through replication. Our proposed method works well for simulated time-course data for finding significant genes even though variance level gets larger.

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.123-134
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• 2019

Lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) is an endogenous lysophospholipid with signaling properties outside of the cell and it signals through specific G protein-coupled receptors, known as $LPA_{1-6}$. For one of its receptors, $LPA_1$ (gene name Lpar1), details on the cis-acting elements for transcriptional control have not been defined. Using 5'RACE analysis, we report the identification of an alternative transcription start site of mouse Lpar1 and characterize approximately 3,500 bp of non-coding flanking sequence 5' of mouse Lpar1 gene for promoter activity. Transient transfection of cells derived from mouse neocortical neuroblasts with constructs from the 5' regions of mouse Lpar1 gene revealed the region between -248 to +225 serving as the basal promoter for Lpar1. This region also lacks a TATA box. For the region between -761 to -248, a negative regulatory element affected the basal expression of Lpar1. This region has three E-box sequences and mutagenesis of these E-boxes, followed by transient expression, demonstrated that two of the E-boxes act as negative modulators of Lpar1. One of these E-box sequences bound the HeLa E-box binding protein (HEB), and modulation of HEB levels in the transfected cells regulated the transcription of the reporter gene. Based on our data, we propose that HEB may be required for a proper regulation of Lpar1 expression in the embryonic neocortical neuroblast cells and to affect its function in both normal brain development and disease settings.

• Journal of Periodontal and Implant Science
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• v.50 no.5
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• pp.313-326
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• 2020

Purpose: This study was conducted to analyze specific RNA expression profiles in gingival tissue and saliva samples in periodontitis patients and healthy individuals, and to determine their correlations in light of the potential use of microarray-based analyses of saliva samples as a periodontal monitoring tool. Methods: Gingival tissue biopsies and saliva samples from 22 patients (12 with severe periodontitis and 10 with a healthy periodontium) were analyzed using transcriptomic microarray analysis. Differential gene expression was assessed, and pathway and clustering analyses were conducted for the samples. The correlations between the results for the gingival tissue and saliva samples were analyzed at both the gene and pathway levels. Results: There were 621 differentially expressed genes (DEGs; 320 upregulated and 301 downregulated) in the gingival tissue samples of the periodontitis group, and 154 DEGs (44 upregulated and 110 downregulated) in the saliva samples. Nine of these genes overlapped between the sample types. The periodontitis patients formed a distinct cluster group based on gene expression profiles for both the tissue and saliva samples. Database for Annotation, Visualization and Integrated Discovery analysis revealed 159 enriched pathways from the tissue samples of the periodontitis patients, as well as 110 enriched pathways In the saliva samples. Thirty-four pathways overlapped between the sample types. Conclusions: The present results indicate the possibility of using the salivary transcriptome to distinguish periodontitis patients from healthy individuals. Further work is required to enhance the extraction of available RNA from saliva samples.

• Toxicological Research
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.21-28
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• 2010

As the frequency and the intensity of so called Asian dust (AD) events have increased, public concerns about the adverse health effects has spiked sharply over the last two decades. Despite the recent reports on the correlation between AD events and the risk for cardiovascular and respiratory disease, the nature of the toxicity and the degree of the risk are yet largely unknown. In the present study, we investigated the effects of the dichloromethane extract of AD (AD-X) and that of urban dust (NAD-X) collected during a non-AD period on gene expression in HL-60 cells using Illumina Sentrix HumanRef-8 Expression BeadChips. Global changes in gene expression were analyzed after 24 h of incubation with 50 or 100 ${\mu}g$/ml AD-X and NAD-X. By one-way analysis of variance (p < 0.05) and Benjamini-Hochberg multiple testing correction for false discovery rate of the results, 573 and 297 genes were identified as AD-X- and NAD-X-responsive, respectively. The genes were classified into three groups by Venn diagram analysis of their expression profile, i.e., 290 AD-X-specific, 14 NAD-X-specific, and 283 overlapping genes. Quantitative realtime PCR confirmed the changes in the expression levels of the selected genes. The expression patterns of five genes, namely SORL1, RABEPK, DDIT4, AZU1, and NUDT1 differed significantly between the two groups. Following rigorous validation process, these genes may provide information in developing biomarker for AD exposure.

• International Journal of Industrial Entomology and Biomaterials
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.51-62
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• 2023

The advantages of silkworms as functional foods are well known and various products are being developed. In general, silkworms sold in the market include silkworm powder (3 days of fifth instars) and SukJam (7 days or more of fifth instars), In other words, product classification is made according to the maturity of the fifth instar silkworms. In this study, we analyzed the gene expression changes in the fifth instar silkworms and attempted to validate the use of deregulated genes in maturity analysis. After rearing BaekokJam, transcriptome analysis was performed on days 1, 3, 5, and 8 days of the fifth instar, and differentially expressed genes showing differences at each period were selected. Of the 31,841 contigs analyzed, 4012 contigs were identified with a log2 fold change of two or more between 5 and 8 days of the fifth instar. RT-PCR was performed for 18 contigs, which showed increased or decreased expression, but in c127159, c97909, c96974, c119920, c42251, and c80216 showed clear differences. To identify SukJam, a combination of the contigs c127159 (180 bp), c97909 (143 bp), and c80216 (120 bp) was amplified. Taken together, these results suggest that the harvest time of silkworms can be determined using gene expression pattern analysis.