• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• 제26권12호
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• pp.2043-2050
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• 2016

Exploring novel antibiotics is necessary for multidrug-resistant pathogenic bacteria. Because the probiotics in soybean food have antimicrobial activities, we investigated their effects on multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii. Nineteen multidrug-resistant A. baumannii strains were clinically isolated as an experimental group and 11 multidrug-sensitive strains as controls. The growth rates of all bacteria were determined by using the analysis for xCELLigence Real-Time Cell. The combination of antibiotics showed synergistic effects on the strains in the control group but no effect on the strains in the experimental group. Efflux pump gene adeS was absent in all the strains from the control group, whereas it exists in all the strains from the experimental group. Furthermore, all the strains lost multidrug resistance when an adeS inhibitor was used. One strain of probiotics isolated from soybean food showed high antimicrobial activity for multidrug-resistant A. baumannii. The isolated strain belongs to Bacillus subtilis according to 16S RNA analysis. Furthermore, E. coli showed multidrug resistance when it was transformed with the adeS gene from A. baumannii whereas the resistant bacteria could be inhibited completely by isolated Bacillus subtilis. Thus, probiotics from soybean food provide potential antibiotics against multidrug-resistant pathogenic bacteria.

• 한국광과학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국광과학회 2003년도 학술대회지
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• pp.97-103
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• 2003

Phytochrome controls diverse aspects of plant development in response to the ambient light conditions. HFRl, a basic helix-loop-helix protein, is required for a subset of phytochrome A (phy A)-mediated photo-responses in Arabidopsis. Here, we show that overexpression of HFR1-N105, but not the one of the full-length HFR1, confers exaggerated photo-responses. The transgenic plants overexpressing HFR1- N105 exhibited light-independence in a subset of photo-responses, including germination, de-etiolation, gravitropic hypocotyl growth, and blocking of greening. Overexpression of HFR1-N105 also caused constitutive light-responses in the expression of some light-regulated genes. In addition, the HFR1-N105 overexpressor showed hypersensitive responses under R and FR light, dependently on phyB and phyA, respectively. End-of-day far-red light response and petiole elongation were suppressed in the HFR1-N105 overexpressor plants. Together these results imply that overexpression of HFR1-N105 activated a branch of light signaling, supporting the hypothesis that transcriptional regulation in the nucleus would be the primary mechanism of light signaling in Arabidopsis. We discuss the biotechnological potential of the mutant bHLH protein, HFR1-N105 in regard to suppressed shade avoidance syndrome.

• The Plant Pathology Journal
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• 제28권2호
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• pp.156-163
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• 2012

Stem rots caused by Rhizoctonia solani and Sclerotinia sclerotiorum have been known as devastating diseases in balloon flower plants. Antifungal activities of four fungicides, azoxystrobin, polyoxin B, trifloxystrobin and validamycin A were evaluated in vitro, showing effective suppression with mycelial growth of the fungal isolates on PDA media. Efficacies of the four fungicides were also demonstrated in stem tissues of balloon flower plants against R. solani and S. sclerotiorum. A commercially available Bacillus subtilis strain Y1336 was tested in terms of antagonistic biological control of stem rot disease of balloon flower plants. The bacterial strain revealed its antifungal activities against R. solani and S. sclerotiorum demonstrated by dual culture tests using paper discs and two plant pathogenic fungi on PDA media, as well as by plant inoculation assay, indicating that this antagonistic bacterial strain can be incorporated into disease management program for balloon flower stem rot diseases together with the four chemical fungicides.

• Biotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering:BBE
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• 제7권2호
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• pp.105-111
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• 2002

The biological removal of 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) was studied in a bench-scale bioreactor using a bacterial culture of strain OK-5 originally Isolated from soil samples contaminated with TNT. The TNT was completely removed within 4 days of incubation in a 2.5 L bench-scale bioreactor containing a newly developed medium. The TNT was catabolized in the presence of different supplemented carbons. Only minimal growth was observed in the killed controls and cultures that only received TNT during the incubation period. This catabolism was affected by the concentration ratio of the substrate to the biomass. The addition of various nitrogen sources produced a delayed effect for the TNT degradation. Tween 80 enhanced the degradation of TNT under these conditions. Two metabolic intermediates were detected and identified as 2-amino-4, 6-dinitrotoluene and 4-amino-2, 6-dinitrotoluene based on HPLC and GC-MS analyses, respectively. Strain OK-5 was characterized using the BIOLOG system and fatty acid profile produced by a microbial identification system equipped with a Hewlett Packard HP 5890 II gas chromatograph. As such, the bacterium was identified as a Stenotrophomonas species and designated as Stenotrophomonas sp. OK-5.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제44권3호
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• pp.289-303
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• 2012

Existing plane stress solutions for thin plates and disks have shown several qualitative features which are difficult to handle with the use of commercial numerical codes (non-existence of solutions, singular solutions, rapid growth of the plastic zone with a loading parameter). In order to understand the effect of temperature and pressure-dependency of the yield criterion on some of such features as well as on the distribution of residual stresses and strains, a semi-analytic solution for a thin hollow disk fixed to a rigid container and subject to thermal loading and subsequent unloading is derived. The material model is elastic-perfectly/plastic. The Drucker-Prager pressure-dependent yield criterion and the equation of incompressibity for plastic strains are adopted. The distribution of residual stresses and strains is illustrated for a wide range of the parameter which controls pressure-dependency of the yield criterion.

• Mycobiology
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• 제37권3호
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• pp.171-182
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• 2009

Many aspergilli that belongs to ascomycetes have sexuality. In a homothallic or self-fertile fungus, a number of fruiting bodies or cleistothecia are formed in a thallus grown from a single haploid conidia or ascospores. Genome-sequencing project revealed that two mating genes (MAT) encoding the regulatory proteins that are necessary for controlling partner recognition in heterothallic fungi were conserved in most aspergilli. The MAT gene products in some self-fertile species were not required for recognition of mating partner at pheromone-signaling stage but required at later stages of sexual development. Various environmental factors such as nutritional status, culture conditions and several stresses, influence the decision or progression of sexual reproduction. A large number of genes are expected to be involved in sexual development of Emericella nidulans (anamorph: Aspergillus nidulans), a genetic and biological model organism in aspergilli. The sexual development process can be grouped into several development stages, including the decision of sexual reproductive cycle, mating process, growth of fruiting body, karyogamy followed by meiosis, and sporulation process. Complicated regulatory networks, such as signal transduction pathways and gene expression controls, may work in each stage and stage-to-stage linkages. In this review, the components joining in the regulatory pathways of sexual development, although they constitute only a small part of the whole regulatory networks, are briefly mentioned. Some of them control sexual development positively and some do negatively. Regarding the difficulties for studying sexual differentiation compare to asexual one, recent progresses in molecular genetics of E. nidulans enlarge the boundaries of understanding sexual development in the non-fertile species as well as in fertile fungi.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• 제20권12호
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• pp.1624-1629
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• 2010

Bacterial cell-to-cell communication, termed quorum sensing (QS), leads to coordinated group behavior in a cell-density-dependent fashion and controls a variety of physiological processes including virulence gene expression. The repressor of the lsr operon, LsrR, is the only known regulator of LuxS/AI-2-mediated QS in Salmonella. Although lack of lsrR did not result in noticeable differences in Salmonella survival, the down-regulation of QS as a result of lsrR overexpression decreased Salmonella survival within macrophages. We found that impaired growth of Salmonella overexpressing lsrR within macrophages was due largely to its hypersensitivity to NADPH-dependent oxidative stress. This, in turn, was a result of decreased expression of genes involved in the oxidative stress response, such as sodA, sodCI, and sodCII, when lsrR was overexpressed. These results suggest that down-regulation of QS by excess LsrR can lower Salmonella virulence by hampering Salmonella evasion from oxidative killing within macrophages.

• 약학회지
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• 제60권1호
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• pp.8-14
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• 2016

Endotoxemia induces production of inflammatory mediators and acute phase proteins, leading to multiorgan injury and systemic inflammation. Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activation and glucocorticoids (GCs) release modify endotoxemia-induced inflammatory responses. In the present study, we investigated whether pre-exposure of GCs influences endotoxin-induced production of inflammatory mediators in hepatocytes. Hepa1c1c-7 cells were pretreated with low concentrations of corticosterone for 24 h and then cultured without corticosterone in the presence or absence of LPS. Our results demonstrated that LPS alone significantly enhanced production of IL-6 and CRP but reduced vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) compared to controls. Combination of corticosterone pretreatment and LPS significantly upregulated production of IL-6, IL-$1{\beta}$, and VEGF but downregulated CRP compared to those in LPS alone. These findings suggest that in low concentration of corticosterone-preexposed hepatocytes, endotoxemia may induce upregulation of IL-6, IL-$1{\beta}$, VEGF and but downregulation of CRP.

• 대한전기학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한전기학회 2000년도 하계학술대회 논문집 C
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• pp.1859-1861
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• 2000

The high temperature thermal plasma technology applied to waste treatment has undoubtedly gained high importance owing to its outstanding properties such as flexibility, compact reactor. and clean treatment as the environmental problem goes to a main issue in public talks, because the thermal plasma with temperature of around 10,000K or little less is particularly suitable for waste treatment. Since the thermal plasma is, in general, governed by a number of parameters, some complicated and elaborate controls might be mandatory. The high maintenance cost caused by big input power has been a main obstacle to the growth of the waste treatment plant based on thermal plasma technology, but the recent R&D on the waste-to-energy shows that the problem could be solved soon. In this paper, the authors introduce the current R&D activity related to three-phase ac plasma torch in KERI.

• Biotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering:BBE
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• 제8권3호
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• pp.187-191
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• 2003

Proteolytic enzymes existing in plant cell cultured media are the major reason for the loss of secreted human granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (hGM-CSF). The addition of pepstatin, aprotinin and PMSF relatively decreased the proteolytic degradation of hGM-CSF in a conditioned medium, but sufficient prevention against the proteolytic activity could not be obtained with chemical protease inhibitors. Gelatin, as a competitive substrate for protease, showed a stabilizing effect in a conditioned medium. Compared to the initial hGM-CSF concentration in a conditioned medium. with 10 g/L of gelatin, 68% of the hGM-CSF remained after 5 days. In a cell culture experiment, 5 g/L of gelatin significantly stimulated the hGM-CSF production and accumulation in culture media, with no growth inhibition. compared to the controls (4.72 $\mu\textrm{g}$/L), the extracellular hGM-CSF level could be increased to 39.78 $\mu\textrm{g}$/L with the addition of 5 g/L of gelatin.