• Journal of Life Science
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• v.15 no.4 s.71
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• pp.513-521
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• 2005

A bacterium producing five fibrinolytic isozymes was isolated from black bean chung kuk. The bacterium was identified as Bacillus subtilis BB-1 by 16s rDNA sequence homology search. A gene out of five fibrinolytic genes in the Bacillus subtilis BB-1 was cloned by shot-gun method. A Cla I DNA fragment of B. subtilis BB-1 chromosome was cloned in to pBluescript II SK(-) and showed the fibrinolytic activity to bacterial cells. The Cla I DNA fragment was sequenced and the sequences did not show homology with gene for protease or fibrinolytic enzyme genes in other organisms. The Cla I DNA fragment was reduced to 2,142 bp by activity-guided PCR cloning method. The optimum pH and temperature of the enzyme were 5.0 and $35^{\circ}C$, respectively. Substrate specificity of the fibrinolytic enzyme was detected in skim milk, casein, gelatin and blood agar plates. The activity of the enzyme was not detected with these substrates. Taken together, this enzyme is a new fibrinolytic enzyme and may be used to prevent thrombosis and arteriosclerosis.

• Korean Journal of Microbiology
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.142-148
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• 2006

In order to develop chitosanase for the production of chitosan oligosaccharides, a chitosanase-producing bacterium was isolated from the traditional fermented soybean, Meju, and identified as Bacillus amyloliquefaciene MJ-1. The cloned chitosanase gene, 825 bp in size, encoded a single peptide of 274 amino acids with a estimated molecular mass of 30.9 kDa. The deduced amino acid sequence showed significant homology with microbial chitosanases. The recombinant chitosanase was expressed in Escherichia coli upon induction with isopropyl-D-thiogalactopyranoside, and purified using $Ni^{2+}-NTA$ agarose column chromatography. The maximal activity of the recombinant chitosanase is at pH 5.0 and $60^{\circ}C$. The recombinant chitosanase is stable between pH 5.0 and pH 7.0 at $37^{\circ}C$ for 30 min, and more than 75% of the activity still remain at $80^{\circ}C$ for 30 min incubation.

• International Journal of Industrial Entomology and Biomaterials
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.63-67
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• 2006

Suppressor of cytokine signaling (SOCS) is known to playa key role as a negative feedback regulator in JAK/STAT signaling cascade in innate immunity. Our laboratory has recently been interested in elucidating the interactions between Spodoptera exigua (Se) and SeNPV. This context leads us to clone and characterize SeSOCS that may have important functions in response to SeNPV infection. Using the RT-PCR and TA cloning approach, we found a partial fragment (416 bp) of SeSOCS. Blast search and multiple alignment data showed that it has a homology to various insects such as Anopheles gambiae (78%), Aedes aegypti (75%), Drosophila melanogastar (77%), Mus musculus (69%), and Homo sapiens (69%). Temporal induction patterns of SeSOCS were analysed after being immune-challenged with either NPV or laminarin. It showed that the level of SeSOCS mRNA was strongly induced in a biphasic manner in response to SeNPV and laminarin, respectively. It seems that SOCS, a negative regulator of JAK/STAT signaling system is also present in S. exigua and may playa role in innate immunity albeit its precise role should be further elucidated at the molecular and cellular level in the early phase of SeNPV infection in larvae.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.668-676
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• 2001

Pseudomonas sp. strain SY5 is a PCB-degrading bacterium [24] that includes two different enzymes (BphC1 and BphC2) encoding 2,3-dihdroxybiphenyl 1,2-dioxygenase and BphD encoding 2-hydroxy-6-oxo-6-phenylhexa-2,4-dienoate hydrolase. The bphC1 and bphC2 genes were found to consist of 897 based encoding 299 amino acids and 882 bases encoding 294 amino acids, respectively, whereas the bphD gene consisted of 861 bases encoding 287 amino acids. According to a homology search, a 50% and 39% similarity between the bphC1 and bphC2 genes at the nucleotide and amino acid level was shown, respectively. The bphC1 gene showed a 38% and 45% similarity at the amino acid level to Alcaligenes eutrophus A5 and Rhodococcus rhodochrous, respectively, whereas, bphC2 showed a 95% and 43% similarity, respectively. A comparison of the deduced amino acid sequence of the bphD product of Pseudomonas sp. SY5 with that of A. eutrophus A5, Pseudomons sp. KKS102, and LB400 showed a sequence identity of 92, 92, and 79%, respectively. Strain SY5 was originally isolated from municipal sewage containing recalcitrant organic compounds an found to have a high degradability of various aromatic compounds [23]. The current study found that strain SY5 had two extradiol-type dioxygenases, which did not hybridize with each other as they had a low similarity, yet a similar structure of evolutionarily conserved amino acids residues for catalytic activity between BphC1 and BphC2 was observed.

• Korean Journal of Microbiology
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.187-193
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• 2015

Candida (also known as Pseudozyma) antarctica lipase B (CAL-B) has been intensely studied in academic and industrial fields. However, the research related to its homologous enzymes has been rarely reported. In the current investigation, protein sequence similarity search of CAL-B has been conducted and six homologous protein sequences were identified. After the syntheses of their codon-optimized genes, the synthetic genes have been cloned into a periplasmic expression vector to express in Escherichia coli. Among six homologous sequences, four sequences were successfully expressed in E. coli. The hydrolytic activities of the expressed proteins towards 4-nitrophenyl acetate and 4-nitrophenyl butyrate were measured and compared with those of CAL-B to identify whether the expressed proteins work as a hydrolase. It has been revealed that the expressed proteins can hydrolyze the substrates and the specific activities were determined as $(1.3-30){\times}10^{-2}{\mu}mol/min/mg$, which are lower than those of CAL-B. Among these homologous enzymes, Pseudozyma hubeiensis SY62 exhibits the comparable enantioselectivity to that of CAL-B towards the hydrolysis of (${\pm}$)-1-phenylethyl acetate.

• Interdisciplinary Bio Central
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.3.1-3.10
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• 2014

Amino acid substitution matrices are essential tools for protein sequence analysis, homology sequence search in protein databases and multiple sequence alignment. The PAM matrix was the first widely used amino acid substitution matrix. The BLOSUM series then succeeded the PAM matrix. Most substitution matrixes were developed by using the statistical frequency of substitution between each amino acid at blocks representing groups of protein families or related proteins. However, substitution of amino acids is based on the similarity of physiochemical properties of each amino acid. In this study, a new approach was used to obtain major physiochemical properties in multiple sequence alignment. Frequency of amino acid substitution in multiple sequence alignment database and selected attributes of amino acids in physiochemical properties database were merged. This merged data showed the major physiochemical properties through principle components analysis. Using factor analysis, these four principle components were interpreted as flexibility of electronic movement, polarity, negative charge and structural flexibility. Applying these four components, BAPS was constructed and validated for accuracy. When comparing receiver operated characteristic ($ROC_{50}$) values, BAPS scored slightly lower than BLOSUM and PAM. However, when evaluating for accuracy by comparing results from multiple sequence alignment with the structural alignment results of two test data sets with known three-dimensional structure in the homologous structure alignment database, the result of the test for BAPS was comparatively equivalent or better than results for prior matrices including PAM, Gonnet, Identity and Genetic code matrix.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.20 no.9
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• pp.1816-1821
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• 2016

Protein secondary structure is important for the study of protein evolution, structure and function of proteins which play crucial roles in most of biological processes. This paper try to effectively extract protein secondary structure information from the large protein structure database in order to predict the protein secondary structure of a query protein sequence. To find more remote homologous sequences of a query sequence in the protein database, we used PSI-BLAST which can perform gapped iterative searches and use profiles consisting of homologous protein sequences of a query protein. The secondary structures of the homologous sequences are weighed combined to the secondary structure prediction according to their relative degree of similarity to the query sequence. When homologous sequences with a neural network predictor were used, the accuracies were higher than those of current state-of-art techniques, achieving a Q3 accuracy of 92.28% and a Q8 accuracy of 88.79%.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.391-397
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• 2020

In this study, we used a novel α-L-arabinopyranosidase (AbpBs) obtained from ginsenoside-converting Blastococcus saxobsidens that was cloned and expressed in Escherichia coli BL21 (DE3), and then applied it in the biotransformation of ginsenoside Rb₂ into Rd. The gene, termed AbpBs, consisting of 2,406 nucleotides (801 amino acid residues), and with a predicted translated protein molecular mass of 86.4 kDa, was cloned into a pGEX4T-1 vector. A BLAST search using the AbpBs amino acid sequence revealed significant homology with a family 2 glycoside hydrolase (GH2). The over-expressed recombinant AbpBs in Escherichia coli BL21 (DE3) catalyzed the hydrolysis of the arabinopyranose moiety attached to the C-20 position of ginsenoside Rb₂ under optimal conditions (pH 7.0 and 40℃). Kinetic parameters for α-L-arabinopyranosidase showed apparent K_m and V_max values of 0.078 ± 0.0002 μM and 1.4 ± 0.1 μmol/min/mg of protein against p-nitrophenyl-α-L-arabinopyranoside. Using a purified AbpBs (1 ㎍/ml), 0.1% of ginsenoside Rb₂ was completely converted to ginsenoside Rd within 1 h. The recombinant AbpBs could be useful for high-yield, rapid, and low-cost preparation of ginsenoside Rd from Rb₂.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.24 no.11
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• pp.1187-1192
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• 2014

Pepper, consumed as a typical spice food around world, is mainly cultivated in warm countries, including Korea, China, and Mexico. Phytophthora capsici is a pathogen on several economically important crops, including pepper. The oomycete attacks the roots, stems, leaves, and fruit of the host plants. To understand the molecular mechanisms underlying development of the disease, the genes expressed during pepper-P. capsici interaction were explored by analyzing expressed sequence tags (ESTs). A cDNA library was constructed from total RNA extracted from pepper leaves challenged with P. capsici for three days, resulting in an early stage of symptom development for comparable interaction. A comprehensive analysis of single-pass sequencing of 5,760 randomly selected cDNA clones extracted 5,148 high-quality entries for contig assembly, which generated 2,990 unigenes. A homology search of the unigenes with BLASTX resulted in 2,409 matches, of which 606 showed classified functional catalogs.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.131-137
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• 2001

Previous work has identified that only the catabolite responsive element A (creA; previously called cre-2) out of two potential cre sequences (cre-1: nucleotide +160 to +173 and cre-2: +173 to +186), recognized within the coding region of the xylanaseA gene (xynA) of Bacillus stearothermophilus No.236, was actually, was actually involved in the carbon catabolite repression(CCR) of xynA expression in B. subtilis. However, the level of CCR of xynA expression in the original B.stearothermophilus No.236 strain (70-fold repression). Therefore, to search for an additional cre element in the promoter region, the upstream region of the xynA gene was subcloned by chromosome walking, and as a result, another potential cre element (nucleotide -124∼-137; designated creB) was recognized in this region. The cre-like sequence revealed a high homology to the cre consensus sequence. The xylanase activity of B. subtilis MW15 bearing pWPBR14 (containing creA and creB) cultured in a medium containing xylose as the sole carbon source was about 7.7 times higher than that observed for the same culture containing glucose. B. subtilis MW15 bearing pWPBR23 (containing only creA) produced an activity about 2.4 times higher. This pattern of CCR was confirmed using derivatives of xynA::aprA fusion plasmids. Furthermore, a measurement of the amounts of the xynA transcript showed a similar pattern as that for the production of xylanase. In addition, the synthesis of xylanase in B. subtilis QB7115 [a catabolite control protein A (ccpA) mutant strain] carrying pWPBR14 was almost completely relieved from glucose repression. Together, these results lead to a conclusion that the CCR of the expression of the xynA gene is mediated by CcpA binding at creA and creB sites in B. subtilis.