• The Plant Pathology Journal
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.179-183
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• 2009

To facilitate the genetic manipulation of Cladosporium phlei, a causal agent of leaf spot disease in timothy (Phleum pretense), protoplast-mediated transformation of C. phlei has been developed and the resulting transformants were characterized in this study. Hygromycin B resistance was applied as a dominant selection marker due to the sensitivity of C. phlei to this antibiotic. The transformation efficiency ranged from approximately 20-100 transformants per experiment. Southern blot analysis of stable transformants revealed that transformation occurred by way of stable integration of the vector DNA into the fungal chromosome. PCR analysis and plasmid rescuing of randomly selected transformants suggested that integration of tandem repeat copies of vector DNA was common. In addition, multiple integrations of the transforming vector at different chromosomal sites were also observed. The establishment of a transformation method for C. phlei facilitates strain improvement of this fungus and can be applied as an initial step in the molecular analysis of pigment production in this fungus.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.7
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• pp.3993-4003
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• 2013

Scientific evidence for the primary prevention of cancer caused by physical activity of regular moderate-intensity or greater is rapidly accumulating in this field. About 300 epidemiologic studies on the association between physical activity and cancer risk have been conducted worldwide. The objectives of this paper were three-fold: (i) to describe briefly the components of physical activity and its quantification; (ii) to summarize the most important conclusions available from comprehensive reports, and reviews of the epidemiologic individual and intervention studies on a role physical activity in cancer prevention; (iii) to present proposed biological mechanisms accounting for effects of activity on cancer risk. The evidence of causal linked physical activity and cancer risk is found to be strong for colon cancer - convincing; weaker for postmenopausal breast and endometrium cancers - probable; and limited suggestive for premenopausal breast, lung, prostate, ovary, gastric and pancreatic cancers. The average risk reductions were reported to be 20-30%. The protective effects of physical activity on cancer risk are hypothesized to be through multiple interrelated pathways: decrease in adiposity, decrease in sexual and metabolic hormones, changes in biomarkers and insulin resistance, improvement of immune function, and reduction of inflammation. As there are several gaps in the literature for associations between activity and cancer risk, additional studies are needed. Future research should include studies dealing with limitations in precise estimates of physical activity and of a lack of consensus on what defines sedentary behavior of individuals and those linked with the proposed biomarkers to cancer risk and controlled exercise intervention trials.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.7
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• pp.4427-4433
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• 2013

Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer in women. HLA class I and II alleles polymorphisms have been shown to be associated with cervical cancer risk, but results have varied among different populations. In this study, the HLA-A, -B, and -DRB1 alleles among 100 southern Chinese women with cervical squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) were compared to 254 controls. Our results showed that $B^*51$:01:02 allele frequency was significantly higher in patients with SCC than in healthy controls ($P=3.17{\times}10^{-5}$, $P_c$=0.005, OR=26.7). Statistical analysis also revealed a significantly decreased frequency of $B^*51$:01:02 ($P=7.01{\times}10^{-4}$, $P_c$=0.03, OR=0.12) in patients with SCC when compared with healthy controls. These results indicate that HLA-$B^*51$:01:02 may confer susceptibility to SCC and HLA-$B^*51$:01:02 may contribute to resistance to the development of SCC in Chinese women. None of the HLA-A-B or HLA-A-B-DRB1 haplotypes were significantly different in cases and controls after multiple testing corrections, indicating the individual allele associations to be independent of the identified haplotypes. These results support the hypothesis that some HLA-B alleles could be involved with susceptibility for developing SCC.

• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.130-134
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• 2016

The influence of Au/Ni-based contact formed on a lightly-doped (7.3×1017cm−3, Zn-doped) InGaAsP layer for electrical compensation of surface plasmon polariton (SPP) propagation under various rapid thermal annealing (RTA) conditions has been studied. The active control of SPP propagation is realized by electrically pumping the InGaAsP multiple quantum wells (MQWs) beneath the metal planar waveguide. The metal planar film acts as the electric contact layer and SPP waveguide, simultaneously. The RTA process can lower the metal-semiconductor electric contact resistance. Nevertheless, it inevitably increases the contact interface morphological roughness, which is detrimental to SPP propagation. Based on this dilemma, in this work we focus on studying the influence of RTA conditions on electrical control of SPPs. The experimental results indicate that there is obvious degradation of electrical pumping compensation for SPP propagation loss in the devices annealed at 400℃ compared to those with no annealing treatment. With increasing annealing duration time, more significant degradation of the active performance is observed even under sufficient current injection. When the annealing temperature is set at 400℃ and the duration time approaches 60s, the SPP propagation is nearly no longer supported as the waveguide surface morphology is severely changed. It seems that eutectic mixture stemming from the RTA process significantly increases the metal film roughness and interferes with the SPP signal propagation.

• The Korean Journal of Food And Nutrition
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.111-115
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• 2003

This study was practiced to investigate characteristics and antibiotics susceptibility to 296 isolates of Escherichia coli isolated from 2429 fishery samples sold in Noryangjin Fishery Market from Sep. 2001 to Aug. 2002 It showed 12.2% average E. coli isolation rates for the tested samples. Isolation rates were high in summer, especially July and August, but there was no isolate in winter season. Of the fishery groups, the isolation rate showed in crustacea(15.6%), in mollusca(14.4%), in shellfish(12.0%) and in fish(11.0%). But, differences between the fishery groups was not large. In the case of shellfish, the isolation rate of shucked shellfish (16.3%) was higher than the non-shucked shellfish (6.8%). Following the provinces of origin of the fishery samples, in Gyung-Nam (14.3%) showed the highest isolation rate, whereas Je-Ju (6.9%) showed the lowest isolation rate. Results in 12 kinds of antibiotics susceptibility test, the 169 isolates(57.1%) had antibiotics resistances at least one kind of antibiotics and the 104 isolates (35.1%) had the multiple resistance at least two kinds.

• Biotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering:BBE
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.29-33
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• 2005

A DNA vaccine methodology using eukaryote expression vectors to produce immunizing proteins in the vaccinated hosts is a novel approach to the development of vaccine and immuno-therapeutics, and it has achieved considerable success over several infectious diseases and various cancers. To further enhance its efficiency, attempts were made to develop novel plasmid vectors containing multiple immunostimulatory CpG motifs, for rapid and strong immune response. First, a 2.9 kb compact plasmid vector (pVAC), containing CMV promoter, polycloning site, BGH poly(A) terminator, ampicillin resistance gene and pBR322 origin was constructed. A pVAC-hEPO was also constructed, which contained a human erythropoietin gene, for evaluating the transfection efficiency of naked plasmid DNA both in vitro and in vivo. To examine the adjuvant effect of multi-CpG motifs on naked plasmid DNA, 22 and 44 enriched and unmethylated CpG motifs were introduced into pVAC to generate pVAC-ISS1 and pVAC-ISS2, respectively. $100{\mu}g$ of pSecTagB, pVAC, pVAC-ISS1 or pVAC-ISS2 were each injected intramuscularly into the tibilias anterior muscle of Balb/c mice. The level of interleukin-6 induced in the mice injected with pVAC-ISS1 and pVAC-ISS2 were significantly elevated after 12 hours, which were almost 2 and 2.5 times higher than that in the mice injected with pSecTagB, respectively. These results suggest that DNA vaccine plasmids with enriched CpG motifs can induce rapid secretion of interleukin-6 by lymphocytes. In conclusion, these vectors can contribute to the development of adjuvant-free DNA vaccinations against infectious diseases and various cancers.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.14
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• pp.5913-5916
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• 2015

Gestational trophoblastic neoplasia (GTN) is the malignant form of gestational trophoblastic disease. In non-metastatic GTN, the outcomes of treatment are impressive with methotrexate (MTX) or actinomycin D. We retrospectively reviewed the outcomes of non-metastatic GTN treated at our center from January, 1999 to December, 2013. One hundred and nine patients were recruited to the study. The median age was 33.1 years and over 90% were referral cases. Abnormal vaginal symptoms developed in 37.6% while 56.4% were asymptomatic. The most common antecedent pregnancy was a complete mole (92.7%) with the median interval time from antecedent pregnancy to GTN development being 2.0 months. The median pretreatment B-hCG was 5,624 mIu/ml. The most common first line treatment was methotrexate (MTX) and folinic acid (91.7%) followed by weekly MTX (4.6%), etoposide+ MTX+actinomycin D (EMA) (2.8%), and actinomycin D (0.9%), with the median number of cycles at 5.0. The positive response to first line chemotherapy was 73.8%. The patients were given subsequent chemotherapeutic regimens after resistance to the first line therapy and showed a final remission rate of 89.9%.The significant factor that was frequently found in patients who were non-responders to the first line treatment was a hysterectomy procedure. Two patients developed lung metastasis and brain metastasis at one and four years after the first treatment, respectively. In conclusion, the outcomes of non-metastatic GTN were excellent. However, the patients need long term follow up due to the possibility of developing multiple organ metastases.

• Korean Journal of Community Nutrition
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.179-186
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• 1997

A new bioelectrical impedance method has been developed and evaluated. The electrodes; were made of stainless steel and electrical interfaces were created by an upright subject gripping hand electrodes and stepping onto foot electrodes. Eight tactile electrodes were in contact with surfaces of both hands and feet; thumb, palm and fingers, front sole, and rear sole. Automatic on-off switches were used to change current pathways and to measure voltage differences for target segments. Segmental body resistances and whole body resistance(RWHOLE)were measured in 60 healthy subjects. Segmental resistances of right arm(RRA), left arm(RLA), trunk(RT), right leg(RRL) and left leg(RLL)were310.0$\pm$61.6$\Omega$, 316.9$\pm$64.6$\Omega$, 25.1$\pm$3.4$\Omega$, 236.8$\pm$31.2$\Omega$ and 237.6$\pm$30.4$\Omega$, respectively. Individual segmental impedance indexes(Ht2/RRA, Ht2/RT, and Ht2 /RLA) were closely related to lean body mass(LBM)as measured by densitometry ranged from r=0.925 to 0.960. Ht2/(RRA+RT+RLA) predicted LBM slightly better(r=0.969) than the traditional index, Ht2/RWHOLE(r=0.964), supporting the accuracy of the segmental measurement. A multiple regression equation utilizing Ht2/RRA, Ht2/RT and Ht2/RRL predicted LBM with r=0.971. Ht2/RRA term of the regression contributed to more than 40$\%$ of the LBM prediction, indicating that lean mass of arm represented whole body LBM more closely than other body segments. The new bioimpedance method was characterized by upright posture, eight tactile electrodes, segmental measurements and utilization of electronic switches in comparison with the traditional method. The measurement with this new method was extremely reproducible, quick and easy to use.

• Plant Biotechnology Reports
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.245-254
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• 2011

This study describes an efficient protocol for Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation of two subgroups of genotype AAA bananas (Musa acuminata cv. Pei Chiao and Musa acuminata cv. Gros Michel). Instead of using suspension cells, cauliflower-like bud clumps, also known as multiple bud clumps (MBC), were induced from sucker buds on MS medium containing $N^6$-Benzylaminopurine (BA), Thidiazuron (TDZ), and Paclobutrazol (PP333). Bud slices were co-cultivated with A. tumefaciens C58C1 or EHA105 that carry a plasmid containing Arabidopsis root-type ferredoxin gene (Atfd3) and a plant ferredoxin-like protein (pflp) gene, respectively. These two strains showed differences in transformation efficiency. The EHA105 strain was more sensitive in Pei Chiao, 51.3% bud slices were pflp-transformed, and 12.6% slices were Atfd3-transformed. Gros Michel was susceptible to C58C1 and the transformation efficiency is 4.4% for pflp and 13.1% for Atfd3. Additionally, gene integration of the putative pflp was confirmed by Southern blot. Resulting from the pathogen inoculation assay, we found that the pflp transgenic banana exhibited resistance to Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense tropical race 4. This protocol is highly advantageous to banana cultivars that have difficulties in setting up suspension cultures for the purpose of quality improvement through genetic transformation. In addition, this protocol would save at least 6 months in obtaining explants for transformation and reduce labor for weekly subculture in embryogenic cell suspension culture systems.

• The Plant Pathology Journal
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.63-66
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• 2004

Ginseng (Panax ginseng) is one of the most widely cultivated medicinal herbs in Korea. However, yield losses reached up to 30-60％ due to various diseases during 3 or 5 years of ginseng cultivation in the country. Therefore, successful production of ginseng roots depends primarily on the control of diseases. The objective of this study was to select potential biocontrol agents from rhizobacteria isolated from various plant internal root tissues for the control of multiple ginseng diseases as an alternative to fungicides. Among 106 Bacillus strains, two promising biocontrol agents, Bacillus pumilus strain B1141 and Paenibacillus lentimobus strain B1146, were selected by screening against root rot of ginseng caused by Cylindrocarpon destructans in a greenhouse. Pre-inoculation of selected isolates to seed or l-year-old root of ginseng resulted in stimulation of shoot and/or root growth of seedlings, and successfully controlled root rot caused by C. destructans (P<0.05). Furthermore, drenching of cell suspension of the selected isolates on seedling-growing pots reduced the incidence of Phytophthora blight after the seedlings were challenged with zoospores of Phytophthora cactorum (P<0.05). P. lentimorbus strain B1146 showed antifungal activity against various soil-borne pathogens in vitro, while B. pumilus strain B1141 did not show any. Results of this study suggest that some rhizobacteria can induce resistance against various plant diseases on ginseng.