• Molecules and Cells
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.262-270
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• 2017

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are single-stranded, small RNAs (21-23 nucleotides) that function in gene silencing and translational inhibition via the RNA interference mechanism. Most miRNAs originate from host genomic regions, such as intergenic regions, introns, exons, and transposable elements (TEs). Here, we focused on the palindromic structure of medium reiteration frequencies (MERs), which are similar to precursor miRNAs. Five MER consensus sequences (MER5A1, MER53, MER81, MER91C, and MER117) were matched with paralogous transcripts predicted to be precursor miRNAs in the horse genome (equCab2) and located in either intergenic regions or introns. The MER5A1, MER53, and MER91C sequences obtained from RepeatMasker were matched with the eca-miR-544b, eca-miR-1302, and eca-miR-652 precursor sequences derived from Ensembl transcript database, respectively. Each precursor form was anticipated to yield two mature forms, and we confirmed miRNA expression in six different tissues (cerebrum, cerebellum, lung, spleen, adrenal gland, and duodenum) of one thoroughbred horse. MER5A1-derived miRNAs generally showed significantly higher expression in the lung than in other tissues. MER91C-derived miRNA-5p also showed significantly higher expression in the duodenum than in other tissues (cerebellum, lung, spleen, and adrenal gland). The MER117-overlapped expressed sequence tag generated polycistronic miRNAs, which showed higher expression in the duodenum than other tissues. These data indicate that horse MER transposons encode miRNAs that are expressed in several tissues and are thought to have biological functions.

• Korean Journal of Microbiology
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.164-167
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• 2008

Recently, rolling circle amplification (RCA) technique has been widely focused in the field of gene amplification just like PCR method. We have developed RCA-mer, which is a web-based program searching for primer candidates from a given sequence. It can be applied to find primer lists in DNA amplification experiment based on RCA method. The RCA-mer compares 8-mer primer lists with user's input sequence such as vector, mitochondria, and microbial genome sequence. After calculating 8-mers existences in a given sequence, it displays matched and no-matched primer lists with their GC-contents. In addition to it, RCA-mer can search the existence of 8-mer primer lists in two sequences whether they are co-existed or not. Users can apply candidate primer lists to their researches which use RCA techniques.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.35 no.9
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• pp.2809-2812
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• 2014

The 43-residue defensin-like peptide coprisin, which is isolated from dung bettle, Copris tripartitus, is a potent antimicrobial peptide. In our previous work, we determined the tertiary structure of coprisin and found that alpha helical region of coprisin from residue 19 to residue 30 is important for its antimicrobial activities. Here, we designed cop12mer and cop9mer analogs of coprisin based on the tertiary structure of coprisin. To investigate the relationship between hydrophobicity and antimicrobial activities and develop the potent peptide antibiotics, we designed cop9mer-1 with substitution of $His^2$ with Trp in cop9mer. The results showed that cop9mer-1 has higher toxicities as well as improved antimicrobial activities compared to cop9mer. In order to reduce the toxicity of cop9mer-1, we designed cop9mer-2 and cop9mer-3 with substitution of $Cys^3$ with Lys or Ser. Substitution of $Cys^3$ with these hydrophilic amino acids results in lower cytotoxicities compared to cop9mer-1. Cop9mer-2 with substitution of $Cys^3$ with Lys in Cop9mer-1 showed high antibacterial activities against drug resistant bacteria without cytotoxicity. Antibiotic action of cop9mer-1 analog appears to involve permeabilization of the bacterial cell membrane while cop9mer-2 and cop9mer-3 may have different mechanism of action. These results imply that that optimum balance in hydrophobicity and hydrophilicity in these 9-meric peptides plays key roles in their antimicrobial activities as well as cytotoxicities.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.917-924
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• 2010

The practicability of transgenic tobacco engineered to express bacterial native mercuric reductase (MerA), responsible for the transport of $Hg^{2+}$ ions into the cell and their reduction to elemental mercury ($Hg^0$), without any codon modification, for phytoremediation of mercury pollution was evaluated. Transgenic tobacco plants reduce mercury ions to the metallic form; take up metallic mercury through their roots; and evolve the less toxic elemental mercury. Transformed tobacco produced a large amount of merA protein in leaves and showed a relatively higher resistance phenotype to $HgCl_2$ than wild type. Results suggest that the integrated merA gene, encoding mercuric reductase, a key enzyme of the bacterial mer operon, was stably integrated into the tobacco genome and translated to active MerA, which catalyzes the bioconversion of toxic $Hg^{2+}$ to the least toxic elemental $Hg^0$, and suggest that MerA is capable of reducing the $Hg^{2+}$, probably via NADPH as an electron donor. The transgenic tobacco expressing merA volatilized significantly more mercury than wild-type plants. This is first time we are reporting the expression of a bacterial native merA gene via the nuclear genome of Nicotiana tabacum, and enhanced mercury volatilization from tobacco transgenics. The study clearly indicates that transgenic tobacco plants are reasonable candidates for the remediation of mercurycontaminated areas.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartA
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• v.8A no.4
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• pp.509-516
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• 2001

As results of many genome projects, genomic sequences of many organisms are revealed. Various methods such as global alignment, local alignment are used to analyze the sequences of the organisms, and k -mer analysis is one of the methods for analyzing the genomic sequences. The k -mer analysis explores the frequencies of all k-mers or the symmetry of them where the k -mer is the sequenced base with the length of k. However, existing on-memory algorithms are not applicable to the k -mer analysis because a whole genomic sequence is usually a large text. Therefore, efficient data structures and algorithms are needed. String B-tree is a good data structure that supports external memory and fits into pattern matching. In this paper, we improve the string B-tree in order to efficiently apply the data structure to k -mer analysis, and the results of k -mer analysis for C. elegans and other 30 genomic sequences are shown. We present a visualization system which enables users to investigate the distribution and symmetry of the frequencies of all k -mers using CGR (Chaotic Game Representation). We also describe the method to find the signature which is the part of the sequence that is similar to the whole genomic sequence.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.156-164
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• 2002

In the present study, we tried to investigate whether polymerized basic amino acid e.g. poly-L-lysine (PLL) which has the degree of polymerization under 50mer significantly affects the physiological and stimulated mucin release from cultured hamster tracheal surface epithelial cells. Confluent primary hamster tracheal surface epithelial (HTSE) cells were metabolically radiolabeled with $^3{H}$-glucosamine for 24 hr and chased for 30 min in the presence of either PLLs or adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and PLL to assess the effects on basic or ATP-stimulated $^3{H}$-mucin release. Possible cytotoxicities of PLLs were assessed by measuring lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) release from HTSE cel1s during treatment. The results were as follows: PLLs significantly inhibited basic mucin release from cultured HTSE cells in a dose-dependent manner from the range of 46mer to 14mer; PLL 46mer significantly inhibited the stimulated mucin release by ATP from cultured HTSE cells; there was no significant release of LDH from cultured HTSE cells during treatment. We conclude that PLLs inhibit both physiological and stimulated mucin release from airway epithelial cells without significant cytotoxicity and PLL lost its activity under the range of 14mer. This finding suggests that polymer of basic amino acid like PLL might function as a regulator for hypersecretion of mucus manifested in various respiratory diseases.

• Journal of KIISE:Software and Applications
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• v.27 no.7
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• pp.731-741
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• 2000

This paper proposes a method to detect a facial region and extract facial features which is crucial for visual recognition of human faces. In this paper, we extract the MER(Minimum Enclosing Rectangle) of a face and facial components using projection analysis on both edge image and binary image. We use an active contour model(snakes) for extraction of the contours of eye, mouth, eyebrow, and face in order to reflect the individual differences of facial shapes and converge quickly. The determination of initial contour is very important for the performance of snakes. Particularly, we detect Minimum Enclosing Rectangle(MER) of facial components and then determine initial contours using general shape of facial components within the boundary of the obtained MER. We obtained experimental results to show that MER extraction of the eye, mouth, and face was performed successfully. But in the case of images with bright eyebrow, MER extraction of eyebrow was performed poorly. We obtained good contour extraction with the individual differences of facial shapes. Particularly, in the eye contour extraction, we combined edges by first order derivative operator and zero crossings by second order derivative operator in designing energy function of snakes, and we achieved good eye contours. For the face contour extraction, we used both edges and grey level intensity of pixels in designing of energy function. Good face contours were extracted as well.

• Korean Journal of Microbiology
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• v.52 no.4
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• pp.428-436
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• 2016

The emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria has been increased and become a public health concern worldwide. Many bacterial infections can be sequentially treated with different types of antibiotics. Thus, this study was designed to evaluate the changes in survival, antibiotic susceptibility, mutant frequency, ${\beta}$-lactamase activity, biofilm formation, and gene expression in Klebsiella pneumoniae after exposure to sequential antibiotic treatments of ciprofloxacin and meropenem. Treatments include control (CON; no addition), 1/2 MIC ciprofloxacin addition (1/2CIP), 2 MIC ciprofloxacin addition (2CIP), initial 1/2 MIC ciprofloxacin addition followed by 1/2 MIC meropenem (8 h-incubation) and 2 MIC ciprofloxacin (16 h-incubation) (1/2CIP-1/2MER-2CIP), initial 1/2 MIC ciprofloxacin addition followed by 1/2 MIC meropenem (8 h-incubation) and 2 MIC meropenem (16 h-incubation) (1/2CIP-1/2MER-2MER), and initial 1/2 MIC ciprofloxacin addition followed by 2 MIC ciprofloxacin(8 h-incubation) and 2 MIC meropenem(16 h-incubation) (1/2CIP-2CIP-2MER). No growth of K. pneumoniae was observed for the 2CIP throughout the incubation period. The numbers of planktonic cells varied with the treatments (7~10 log CFU/ml), while those of biofilm cells were not significantly different among treatments after 24-h incubation, showing approximately 7 log CFU/ml. Among the sequential treatments, the least mutant frequency was observed at the 1/2CIP-1/2MER-2CIP (14%). Compared to the CON, 1/2CIP-2CIP-2MER decreased the sensitivity of K. pneumoniae to piperacillin, cefotaxime, and nalidixic acid. The highest ${\beta}$-lactamase activity was 22 nmol/min/ml for 1/2CIP-1/2MER-2CIP, while the least ${\beta}$-lactamase activity was 6 nmol/min/ml for 1/2CIP-2CIP-2MER. The relative expression levels of multidrug efflux pump-related genes (acrA, acrB, and ramA) were increased more than 2-fold in K. pneumoniae exposed to 1/2CIP-1/2MER-2MER and 1/2CIP-2CIP-2MER. The results suggest that the sequential antibiotic treatments could change the antibiotic resistance profiles in K. pneumoniae.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.274-282
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• 2019

Mercury-resistant ($Hg^R$) bacteria were isolated from heavy metal polluted wastewater and soil collected near to tanneries of district Kasur, Pakistan. Bacterial isolates AZ-1, AZ-2 and AZ-3 showed resistance up to $40{\mu}g/ml$ against mercuric chloride ($HgCl_2$). 16S rDNA ribotyping and phylogenetic analysis were performed for the characterization of selected isolates as Bacillus sp. AZ-1 (KT270477), Bacillus cereus AZ-2 (KT270478) and Bacillus cereus AZ-3 (KT270479). Phylogenetic relationship on the basis of merA nucleotide sequence confirmed 51-100% homology with the corresponding region of the merA gene of already reported mercury-resistant Gram-positive bacteria. The merE gene involved in the transportation of elemental mercury ($Hg^0$) via cell membrane was cloned for the first time into pHLV vector and transformed in overexpressed C43(DE3) E. coli cells. The recombinant plasmid (pHLMerE) was expressed and the native MerE protein was obtained after thrombin cleavage by size exclusion chromatography (SEC). The purification of fusion/recombinant and native protein MerE by Ni-NTA column, dialysis and fast protein liquid chromatography (FPLC/SEC) involved unfolding/refolding techniques. A small-scale reservoir of wastewater containing $30{\mu}g/ml$ of $HgCl_2$ was designed to check the detoxification ability of selected strains. It resulted in 83% detoxification of mercury by B. cereus AZ-2 and B. cereus AZ-3, and 76% detoxification by Bacillus sp. AZ-1 respectively (p < 0.05).

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.59-66
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• 1995

Energy obtained by grazing cattle in oil palm plantations is usually used for maintenance of body functions, the construction of body tissues and pregnancy, the synthesis of milk and the conversion to mechanical energy used for activities such as walking, eating and others. In this study, attempt was made to estimate metabolizable energy (ME) requirement of grazing cattle. Models of ME requirement (MER) for maintenance, gain, pregnancy, lactation and activities were developed. ME system and units were used because of wide recognition. Estimation of ME intake in grazing cattle was expressed as MEVI = $14.58{\times}VI{\times}DMD$, and under grazing condition MEVI = $MER_i$. MER was expressed as a function of net energy(NER, MJ) required for the i'th body function. Coefficient of efficiency for conversion of ME into net energy(ki) was adopted from literatures. Quantifying of ME requirement for Kedah-Kelantan cattle under grazing condition was made by using equation MERM = NEM / kn. The estimated values of MER for Kedah-Kelantan cattle is quite reasonable if compared with other estimates as reported in literatures from stall-fed animals. Dynamic MER models for grazing herd was developed in order to estimate ME requirement for maintenance and productions. These ME requirement models can be used for prediction of energy utilization pattern of the herd in the grazing systems.