• Journal of Ginseng Research
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• 제36권4호
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• pp.449-460
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• 2012

Plants have versatile detoxification systems to encounter the phytotoxicity of the wide range of natural and synthetic compounds present in the environment. Glutathione S-transferase (GST) is an enzyme that detoxifies natural and exogenous toxic compounds by conjugation with glutathione (GSH). Recently, several roles of GST giving stress tolerance in plants have demonstrated, but little is known about the role of ginseng GSTs. Therefore, this work aimed to provide further information on the GST gene present in Panax ginseng genome as well as its expression and function. A GST cDNA (PgGST) was isolated from P. ginseng cDNA library, and it showed the amino acid sequence similarity with theta type of GSTs. PgGST in ginseng plant was induced by exposure to metals, plant hormone, heavy metals, and high light irradiance. To improve the resistance against environmental stresses, full-length cDNA of PgGST was introduced into Nicotiana tabacum. Overexpression of PgGST led to twofold increase in GST-specific activity compared to the non-transgenic plants, and the GST overexpressed plant showed resistance against herbicide phosphinothricin. The results suggested that the PgGST isolated from ginseng might have a role in the protection mechanism against toxic materials such as heavy metals and herbicides.

• 한국컴퓨터정보학회논문지
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• 제18권5호
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• pp.95-102
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• 2013

생명체 내에서 나타나는 네트워크 중 하나인 대사 경로는 화합물의 상호 관계를 그래프를 통해 표현된다. 대사 경로는 본질적인 복잡성 때문에 대사 경로 내의 흐름을 한 눈에 알 수 있도록 가시화하여 보여 주는 도구가 반드시 필요하다. 이러한 가시화 도구의 경우 노드수가 증가할수록 에지 교차가 기하급수적으로 증가하는 문제가 있다. 따라서 유전체 수준의 대사 경로를 연구하기 위해서는 대사 경로 그래프 레이아웃 상에 나타나는 에지 교차를 줄이는 것이 시각화의 매우 중요한 부분이다. 본 논문은 생물학에서의 대사 경로에 대한 시각화를 위한 2-계층을 이용한 대사 경로 레이아웃 알고리즘을 제안한다. 대사 경로의 구조적 특징을 고려하여 대사 경로 그래프에 존재하는 주요 컴포넌트인 환형 컴포넌트 또는 연결성 높은 노드를 찾아 상위 계층에 레이아웃 하고 나머지 부분그래프는 하위 계층에 레이아웃 한다. 제안한 대사 경로 레이아웃 알고리즘은 유연성 있는 대사 경로 분석의 기초가 된다.

• 한국컴퓨터정보학회논문지
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• 제18권6호
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• pp.71-79
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• 2013

화합물의 상호 관계를 그래프를 통해 표현하는 대사 경로는 본질적인 복잡성 때문에 대사 경로 내의 흐름을 한눈에 알 수 있도록 가시화하여 보여 주는 도구가 반드시 필요하다. 또한 유전체 수준의 대사 경로를 연구하기 위해서는 대사 경로 그래프 레이아웃 상에 나타나는 에지 교차를 줄이는 것이 시각화의 매우 중요한 부분이다. 본 논문은 생물학에서의 대사 경로에 대한 시각화를 위한 3-계층을 이용한 대사 경로 레이아웃 알고리즘을 제안한다. 대사경로의 구조적 특징을 고려하여 노드수가 증가하여도 에지 교차가 기하급수적으로 증가하는 문제를 해결하기 위하여 연결성 높은 노드와 환형 컴포넌트를 중앙계층에 위치시키고 나머지 부분 그래프를 상위와 하위 계층에 레이아웃 하도록 한다. 실험을 통해 에지 교차수가 줄어듦을 확인할 수 있다.

• Journal of Microbiology
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• 제45권3호
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• pp.187-192
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• 2007

REOviruses (Respiratory Enteric Orphan viruses) are ubiquitous, non-enveloped viruses containing 10 segments of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) as their genome. They are common isolates of the respiratory and gastrointestinal tract of humans but are not associated with severe disease and are therefore considered relatively benign. An intriguing characteristic of reovirus is its innate oncolytic potential, which is linked to the transformed state of the cell. When immortalized cells are transfected in vitro with activated oncogenes such as Ras, Sos, v-erbB, or c-myc, they became susceptible to reovirus infection and subsequent cellular lysis, indicating that oncogene signaling pathways are exploited by reovirus. This observation has led to the use of the virus in clinical trials as an anti-cancer agent against oncogenic tumors. In addition to the exploitation of oncogene signaling, reovirus may further utilize host immune responses to enhance its antitumor activity in vivo due to its innate interferon induction ability. Reovirus is, however, not entirely benign to immunocompromised animal models. Reovirus causes so-called "black feet syndrome" in immunodeficient mice and can also harm neonatal animals. Because cancer patients often undergo immunosuppression due to heavy chemo/radiation-treatments or advanced tumor progression, this pathogenic response may be a hurdle in virus-based anticancer therapies. However, a genetically attenuated reovirus variant derived from persistent reovirus infection of cells in vitro is able to exert potent anti-tumor activity with significantly reduced viral pathogenesis in immunocompromised animals. Importantly, in this instance the attenuated, reovirus maintains its oncolytic potential while significantly reducing viral pathogenesis in vivo.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• 제22권12호
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• pp.1613-1620
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• 2012

Bacterial wilt caused by Ralstonia solanacearum is a devastating disease of many economically important crops. Since there is no promising control strategy for bacterial wilt, phage therapy could be adopted using virulent phages. We used phage PE204 as a model lytic bacteriophage to investigate its biocontrol potential for bacterial wilt on tomato plants. The phage PE204 has a short-tailed icosahedral structure and double-stranded DNA genome similar to that of the members of Podoviridae. PE204 is stable under a wide range of temperature and pH, and is also stable in the presence of the surfactant Silwet L-77. An artificial soil microcosm (ASM) to study phage stability in soil was adopted to investigate phage viability under a controlled system. Whereas phage showed less stability under elevated temperature in the ASM, the presence of host bacteria helped to maintain a stable phage population. Simultaneous treatment of phage PE204 at $10^8$ PFU/ml with R. solanacearum on tomato rhizosphere completely inhibited bacterial wilt occurrence, and amendment of Silwet L-77 at 0.1% to the phage suspension did not impair the disease control activity of PE204. The biocontrol activities of phage PE204 application onto tomato rhizosphere before or after R. solanacearum inoculation were also investigated. Whereas pretreatment with the phage was not effective in the control of bacterial wilt, post-treatment of PE204 delayed bacterial wilt development. Our results suggested that appropriate application of lytic phages to the plant root system with a surfactant such as Silwet L-77 could be used to control the bacterial wilt of crops.

• Applied Biological Chemistry
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• 제38권6호
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• pp.522-527
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• 1995

흑조위축병 바이러스(RBSDV)에 대한 antiviral agent를 개발하기위하여 RBSDV 게놈 조각 3번을 절단하는 망치머리형 구조의 라이보자임을 설계하였다. 라이보자임과 기질의 oligonucleotides는 DNA 합성기로 합성 후 서로 합치고, pBluescript KS(+)에 삽입하였다. 라이보자임과 기질 RNA는 $T_3$ RNA polymerase로 기내 전사하여 각각 193과 183 nucleotide의 RNA를 얻었다. 기질 RNA는 라이보자임 RNA에 의해 $55^{\circ}C$에서 2개의 조각으로 절단되었으나 $37^{\circ}C$에서는 절단되지 않았다. 또한 RBSDV의 3번 조각 RNA도 동일한 라이보자임에 의해 절단되었다. 이러한 결과로 합성된 헤머해드 라이보자임은 기내 절단 능력을 가지며 형질전환 식물체에서 antiviral agent로 이용될 수 있을 것이다.

• Molecules and Cells
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• 제44권10호
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• pp.723-735
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• 2021

Spemann organizer is a center of dorsal mesoderm and itself retains the mesoderm character, but it has a stimulatory role for neighboring ectoderm cells in becoming neuroectoderm in gastrula embryos. Goosecoid (Gsc) overexpression in ventral region promotes secondary axis formation including neural tissues, but the role of gsc in neural specification could be indirect. We examined the neural inhibitory and stimulatory roles of gsc in the same cell and neighboring cells contexts. In the animal cap explant system, Gsc overexpression inhibited expression of neural specific genes including foxd4l1.1, zic3, ncam, and neurod. Genome-wide chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing (ChIP-seq) and promoter analysis of early neural genes of foxd4l1.1 and zic3 were performed to show that the neural inhibitory mode of gsc was direct. Site-directed mutagenesis and serially deleted construct studies of foxd4l1.1 promoter revealed that Gsc directly binds within the foxd4l1.1 promoter to repress its expression. Conjugation assay of animal cap explants was also performed to demonstrate an indirect neural stimulatory role for gsc. The genes for secretory molecules, Chordin and Noggin, were up-regulated in gsc injected cells with the neural fate only achieved in gsc uninjected neighboring cells. These experiments suggested that gsc regulates neuroectoderm formation negatively when expressed in the same cell and positively in neighboring cells via soluble factors. One is a direct suppressive circuit of neural genes in gsc expressing mesoderm cells and the other is an indirect stimulatory circuit for neurogenesis in neighboring ectoderm cells via secreted BMP antagonizers.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• 제47권4호
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• pp.309-315
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• 2020

Advances in biotechnology have led to progress in crop genetic engineering to improve agricultural productivity. The use of genetically modified (GM) crops has increased, as have consumers' and regulators' concerns about the safety of GM crops to human health, and ecological biodiversity. As such, the identification of GM crops is a critical issue for developers and distributors, and their labeling is mandatory. Multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) has been developed and its use validated for the detection and identification of GM crops in quarantine. Herein, we established a simultaneous detection method to identify four GM maize events. Event-specific primers were designed between the junction region of transgene and genome of four GM maize lines, namely 5307, DAS-40278-9, MON87460, and MON87427. To verify the efficiency and accuracy of the multiplex PCR we used specificity analysis, limit of detection evaluation, and mixed certified reference materials identification. The multiplex PCR method was applied to analyze 29 living, modified maize volunteers collected in South Korea in 2018 and 2019. We performed multiplex PCR analysis to identify events and confirmed the result by simplex PCR using each event-specific primer. As a result, rather than detecting each event individually, the simultaneous detection PCR method enabled the rapid analysis of 29 GM maize volunteers. Thus, the novel multiplex PCR method is applicable for living modified organism volunteer identification.

• Genomics & Informatics
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• 제16권4호
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• pp.34.1-34.9
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• 2018

Cirsium japonicum belongs to the Asteraceae or Compositae family and is a medicinal plant in Asia that has a variety of effects, including tumour inhibition, improved immunity with flavones, and antidiabetic and hepatoprotective effects. Silymarin is synthesized by 4-coumaroyl-CoA via both the flavonoid and phenylpropanoid pathways to produce the immediate precursors taxifolin and coniferyl alcohol. Then, the oxidative radicalization of taxifolin and coniferyl alcohol produces silymarin. We identified the expression of genes related to the synthesis of silymarin in C. japonicum in three different tissues, namely, flowers, leaves, and roots, through RNA sequencing. We obtained 51,133 unigenes from transcriptome sequencing by de novo assembly using Trinity v2.1.1, TransDecoder v2.0.1, and CD-HIT v4.6 software. The differentially expressed gene analysis revealed that the expression of genes related to the flavonoid pathway was higher in the flowers, whereas the phenylpropanoid pathway was more highly expressed in the roots. In this study, we established a global transcriptome dataset for C. japonicum. The data shall not only be useful to focus more deeply on the genes related to product medicinal metabolite including flavolignan but also to study the functional genomics for genetic engineering of C. japonicum.

• BMB Reports
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• 제52권6호
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• pp.403-408
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• 2019

Dorsoventral patterning of body axis in vertebrate embryo is tightly controlled by a complex regulatory network of transcription factors. Ventx1.1 is known as a transcriptional repressor to inhibit dorsal mesoderm formation and neural differentiation in Xenopus. In an attempt to identify, using chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP)-Seq, genome-wide binding pattern of Ventx1.1 in Xenopus gastrulae, we observed that Ventx1.1 associates with its own 5'-flanking sequence. In this study, we present evidence that Ventx1.1 binds a cis-acting Ventx1.1 response element (VRE) in its own promoter, leading to repression of its own transcription. Site-directed mutagenesis of the VRE in the Ventx1.1 promoter significantly abrogated this inhibitory autoregulation of Ventx1.1 transcription. Notably, Ventx1.1 and Xcad2, an activator of Ventx1.1 transcription, competitively co-occupied the VRE in the Ventx1.1 promoter. In support of this, mutation of the VRE down-regulated basal and Xcad2-induced levels of Ventx1.1 promoter activity. In addition, overexpression of Ventx1.1 prevented Xcad2 from binding to the Ventx1.1 promoter, and vice versa. Taken together, these results suggest that Ventx1.1 negatively regulates its own transcription in competition with Xcad2, thereby fine-tuning its own expression levels during dorsoventral patterning of Xenopus early embryo.