• Molecules and Cells
• /
• v.28 no.2
• /
• pp.99-103
• /
• 2009

Human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) have been implicated in the pathogenesis of several human diseases as multi-copy members in the human genome. Their gene expression profiling could provide us with important insights into the pathogenic relationship between HERVs and cancer. In this study, we have evaluated the genomic structure and quantitatively determined the expression patterns in the env gene of a variety of HERV family members located on six specific loci by the RetroTector 10 program, as well as real-time RT-PCR amplification. The env gene transcripts evidenced significant differences in the human tumor/normal adjacent tissues (colon, liver, uterus, lung and testis). As compared to the adjacent normal tissues, high levels of expression were noted in testis tumor tissues for HERV-K, in liver and lung tumor tissues for HERV-R, in liver, lung, and testis tumor tissues for HERV-H, and in colon and liver tumor tissues for HERV-P. These data warrant further studies with larger groups of patients to develop biomarkers for specific human cancers.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society of Poultry Science Conference
• /
• 2000.11a
• /
• pp.78-80
• /
• 2000

A new murine TGF-$\beta$ family member, myostatin(growth/differentiation factor-8) is expressed specifically in developing and adult skeletal muscle and may be a negative regulator of skeletal muscle development. This study aims at characterization and identification of genomic organization of chicken myostatin gene. In thi study, we identified the genomic organization and sequence of chicken myostatin gene. Results of RT-PCR and Northern blots from various tissues showed different mRNA expression levels in developmental stages of chick embryos and demonstrated strong expression of myostatin mRNA in skeletal muscle. These facts suggest that chicken myostatin gene would play an important role not only in skeletal muscle cell but also in other tissues.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
• /
• v.2 no.1
• /
• pp.56-65
• /
• 1992

The complete nucleotide sequence of the Bacillus circulans F-2 RSDA gene, coding for raw starch digesting a-amylase (RSDA), has been determined. The RSDA structure gene consists of an open reading frame of 2508 bp. Six bp upstream of the translational start codon of the RSDA is a typical gram-positive Shine-Dalgarno sequence and the RSDA encodes a preprotein of 836 amino acids with an Mr of 96, 727. The gene was expressed from its own regulatory region in E. coli and two putative consensus promoter sequences were identified upstream of a ribosome binding site and an ATG start codon. Confirmation of the nucleotide sequence was obtained and the signal peptide cleavage site was identified by comparing the predicted amino acid sequence with that derived by N-terminal analysis of the purified RSDA. The deduced N-terminal region of the RSDA conforms to the general pattern for the signal peptides of secreted prokaryotic proteins. The complete amino acid sequence was deduced and homology with other enzymes was compared. The results suggested that the Thr-Ser-rich hinge region and the non-catalytic domain are necessary for efficient adsorption onto raw substrates, and the catalytic domain (60 kDa) is necessary for the hydrolysis of substrates, as suggested in previous studies (8, 9).

• Macromolecular Research
• /
• v.14 no.3
• /
• pp.348-353
• /
• 2006

For enhancing the gene delivery efficiency of polyplexes, a new formulation was developed using PEI conjugated Pluronic F127 copolymer as an effective additive. Low molecular weight, branched polyethylenimine Mw 600 (LMW BPEI 600) was conjugated to the terminal end of Pluronic F127. The PEI-modified Pluronic copolymers formed a micellar structure in aqueous solution, similar to that of unmodified Pluronic copolymer. PEI modification of Pluronic copolymer increased the size of micelles while concomitantly raising the critical micelle concentration (CMC). The PEI-modified Pluronic copolymer was used as a micellar additive to enhance the gene transfection efficiency of pre-formulated polyelectrolyte complex nanoparticles composed of luciferase plasmid DNA and branched PEI Mw 25k (BPEI 25k) or polylysine Mw 39k (PLL 39k). The luciferase gene expression levels were significantly enhanced by the addition of the BPEI-modified Pluronic copolymer for the two formulations of BPEl and PLL polyplexes. The results indicated that the BPEI-modified Pluronic copolymer micelles ionically interacted on the surface of DNA/BPEI (PLL) polyplexes which might facilitate cellular uptake process.

• Mycobiology
• /
• v.46 no.4
• /
• pp.361-369
• /
• 2018

The rice blast fungus, Magnaporthe oryzae, is an important pathogen of rice plants. It is well known that genes encoded in the genome have different evolutionary histories that are related to their functions. Phylostratigraphy is a method that correlates the evolutionary origin of genes with evolutionary transitions. Here we applied phylostratigraphy to partition total gene content of M. oryzae into distinct classes (phylostrata), which we designated PS1 to PS7, based on estimation of their emergence time. Genes in individual phylostrata did not show significant biases in their global distribution among seven chromosomes, but at the local level, clustering of genes belonging to the same phylostratum was observed. Our phylostrata-wide analysis of genes revealed that genes in the same phylostratum tend to be similar in many physical and functional characteristics such as gene length and structure, GC contents, codon adaptation index, and level of transcription, which correlates with biological functions in evolutionary context. We also found that a significant proportion of genes in the genome are orphans, for which no orthologs can be detected in the database. Among them, we narrowed down to seven orphan genes having transcriptional and translational evidences, and showed that one of them is implicated in asexual reproduction and virulence, suggesting ongoing evolution in this fungus through lineage-specific genes. Our results provide genomic basis for linking functions of pathogenicity factors and gene emergence time.

• Genomics & Informatics
• /
• v.20 no.1
• /
• pp.8.1-8.14
• /
• 2022

Despite the success of recent genome-wide association studies investigating longitudinal traits, a large fraction of overall heritability remains unexplained. This suggests that some of the missing heritability may be accounted for by gene-gene and gene-time/environment interactions. In this paper, we develop a Bayesian variable selection method for longitudinal genetic data based on mixed models. The method jointly models the main effects and interactions of all candidate genetic variants and non-genetic factors and has higher statistical power than previous approaches. To account for the within-subject dependence structure, we propose a grid-based approach that models only one fixed-dimensional covariance matrix, which is thus applicable to data where subjects have different numbers of time points. We provide the theoretical basis of our Bayesian method and then illustrate its performance using data from the 1000 Genome Project with various simulation settings. Several simulation studies show that our multivariate method increases the statistical power compared to the corresponding univariate method and can detect gene-time/ environment interactions well. We further evaluate our method with different numbers of individuals, variants, and causal variants, as well as different trait-heritability, and conclude that our method performs reasonably well with various simulation settings.

• Communications for Statistical Applications and Methods
• /
• v.29 no.1
• /
• pp.65-83
• /
• 2022

Although various statistical methods have been developed to map time-dependent genetic factors, most identified genetic variants can explain only a small portion of the estimated genetic variation in longitudinal traits. Gene-gene and gene-time/environment interactions are known to be important putative sources of the missing heritability. However, mapping epistatic gene-gene interactions is extremely difficult due to the very large parameter spaces for models containing such interactions. In this paper, we develop a Gaussian process (GP) based nonparametric Bayesian variable selection method for longitudinal data. It maps multiple genetic markers without restricting to pairwise interactions. Rather than modeling each main and interaction term explicitly, the GP model measures the importance of each marker, regardless of whether it is mostly due to a main effect or some interaction effect(s), via an unspecified function. To improve the flexibility of the GP model, we propose a novel grid-based method for the within-subject dependence structure. The proposed method can accurately approximate complex covariance structures. The dimension of the covariance matrix depends only on the number of fixed grid points although each subject may have different numbers of measurements at different time points. The deviance information criterion (DIC) and the Bayesian predictive information criterion (BPIC) are proposed for selecting an optimal number of grid points. To efficiently draw posterior samples, we combine a hybrid Monte Carlo method with a partially collapsed Gibbs (PCG) sampler. We apply the proposed GP model to a mouse dataset on age-related body weight.

• Journal of Applied Biological Chemistry
• /
• v.65 no.3
• /
• pp.159-166
• /
• 2022

Epicoccum nigrum produces epipyrone A (orevactaene), a yellow polyketide pigment. Its biosynthetic gene cluster was previously characterized in E. nigrum KACC 40642. The YES liquid culture of this strain revealed high-level production of epicoccamide (EPC), with an identity that was determined using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry analysis and molecular mass search using the SuperNatural database V2 webserver. The production of EPC was further confirmed by compound isolation and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. EPC is a highly reduced polyketide with tetramic acid and mannosyl moieties. The EPC structure guided us to localize the hypothetical EPC biosynthetic gene cluster (BGC) in E. nigrum ICMP 19927 genome sequence. The BGC contains genes encoding highly reducing (HR)-fungal polyketide synthase (fPKS)-nonribosomal peptide synthetase (NRPS), glycosyltransferase (GT), enoylreductase, cytochrome P450, and N-methyltrasnferase. Targeted inactivation of the HR-fPKS-NRPS and GT genes abolished EPC production, supporting the successful localization of EPC BGC. This study provides a platform to explore the hidden biological activities of EPC, a bolaamphiphilic compound.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Crop Science Conference
• /
• 2022.10a
• /
• pp.218-218
• /
• 2022

Granules-bound starch synthase II (GBSSII), one of the isoforms of granule-bound starch synthase (GBSS), is responsible for amylose synthesis by expressing in non-storage tissues such as leaf, stem, root, and pericarp. Up to date, little is known about this gene functions and basic knowledge of heritable characteristics of this gene, GBSSII. We identified functional haplotypes and performed evolutionary analyses on the GBSSII using 374 rice accessions (320 Korean bred and 54 wild) based on the classified groups. A total of 14 haplotypes were found, and almost all haplotypes (13) were functional, carrying 19 non-synonymous SNPs in two exons (exons 1 and 2). The lowest nucleotide diversity was detected in Tropical japonica (0.00145), while the highest pi-value was in Aus (0.01081), illustrating the signal of this gene evolution. The highest Tajima's D value in Aus (1.6380) indicates GBSSII gene domestication signature under balancing selection, while the lowest Tajima's D value in Temperate japonica (-0.8243) highlights that they were under positive selection, which may be purified due to the excess of rare alleles. The highest genetic differentiation was observed between Tropical japonica and aroma (F_ST = 0.921928). In contrast, the highest interbreed level was detected in Aus-admixture (F_ST = -0.20157). The genetic relatedness between and or among the wild and cultivated subpopulations was revealed through PCA, population structure, and phylogenetic analyses.

• Proceedings of the Zoological Society Korea Conference
• /
• 2000.10a
• /
• pp.217.3-218
• /
• 2000

No Abstract, See Full Text