• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.08a
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• pp.91-91
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• 2013

Imagine a world where we could biomanufacture hybrid nanomaterials having atomic-scale resolution over functionality and architecture. Toward this vision, a fundamental challenge in materials science is how to design and synthesize protein-like material that can be fully self-assembled and exhibit information-specific process. In an ongoing effort to extend the fundamental understanding of protein structure to non-natural systems, we have designed a class of short peptides to fold like proteins and assemble into defined nanostructures. In this talk, I will talk about new strategies to drive the self-assembled structures designing sequence of peptide. I will also discuss about the specific interaction between proteins and inorganics that can be used for the development of new hybrid solar energy devices. Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen is one of the promising pathways for solar to energy convertsion and storage system. The oxygen evolution reaction (OER) has been regarded as a major bottleneck in the overall water splitting process due to the slow transfer rate of four electrons and the high activation energy barrier for O-O bond formation. In nature, there is a water oxidation complex (WOC) in photosystem II (PSII) comprised of the earthabundant elements Mn and Ca. The WOC in photosystem II, in the form of a cubical CaMn4O5 cluster, efficiently catalyzes water oxidation under neutral conditions with extremely low overpotential (~160 mV) and a high TOF number. The cluster is stabilized by a surrounding redox-active peptide ligand, and undergo successive changes in oxidation state by PCET (proton-coupled electron transfer) reaction with the peptide ligand. It is fundamental challenge to achieve a level of structural complexity and functionality that rivals that seen in the cubane Mn4CaO5 cluster and surrounding peptide in nature. In this presentation, I will present a new strategy to mimic the natural photosystem. The approach is based on the atomically defined assembly based on the short redox-active peptide sequences. Additionally, I will show a newly identified manganese based compound that is very close to manganese clusters in photosystem II.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.850-855
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• 2007

Leptin is the adipocyte-specific product of the obese gene and plays a major role in food intake and energy metabolism. Leptin research was mainly focused on mammalian species, but understanding of leptin and its function in poultry is very poor. In this study, the duck leptin gene was amplified using the reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) from duck liver RNA. The cDNA fragment was inserted into the pET-28a expression vector, and the resulting plasmid was expressed in Escherichia coli BL21 (DE3). Experimental mice were given an intraperitoneal injection of 10 mg/kg leptin dissolved in phosphate buffered saline (PBS), while the control mice were injected with PBS. The effect of leptin on food intake, body weight and fatty deposition in mice was detected. Sequence analysis revealed that duck leptin had a length of 438 nucleotides which encoded a peptide with 146 amino acid residues. The sequence shares highly homology to other animals. The coding sequence of duck leptin was 84 and 86% identical to human and pig leptin nucleotides sequence. Highest identity was with the rat coding sequence (95%). The identity of the amino acid sequence was 84, 82 and 96% respectively compared to that of the human, pig and rat. Results of SDS-PAGE analysis indicated that a fusion protein was specifically expressed in E. coli BL21 (DE3). The purified product was found to be biologically active during tests. Continuous administration of recombinant duck leptin inhibited food intake. Despite the decrease of food intake, leptin significantly induced body weight and fatty deposition. These changes were accompanied by a significant down-secretion of plasma glucose, cholesterol, triglyceride and insulin levels in mice. The observations provide evidence for an inhibitory effect of leptin in the regulation of food intake and for a potential role of duck leptin in the regulation of lipogenesis.

• The KIPS Transactions:PartD
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• v.10D no.2
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• pp.261-266
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• 2003

A protein, which is a linear polymer of amino acids, is one of the most important bio-molecules composing biological structures and regulating bio-chemical reactions. Since the characteristics and functions of proteins are determined by their amino acid sequences in principle, protein sequence determination is the starting point of protein function study. This paper proposes a protein sequence prediction method based on data mining techniques, which can overcome the limitation of previous bio-chemical sequencing methods. After applying multiple proteases to acquire overlapped protein fragments, we can identify candidate fragment sequences by comparing fragment mass values with peptide databases. We propose a method to construct multi-partite graph and search maximal paths to determine the protein sequence by assembling proper candidate sequences. In addition, experimental results based on the SWISS-PROT database showing the validity of the proposed method is presented.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.46-55
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• 1999

The expressed sequence tags(ESTs) from immature seed of rice, Oryza sativa cv Milyang 23, were partially sequenced and analyzed by homology. As of 1998, the partial sequences of about 6,600 cDNA clones were analyzed from normal and normalized immature seed cDNA libraries. About 2,200 ESTs were putatively identified by BLASTX deduced amino acid sequence homology analysis. About 20% of them were putatively identified as storage proteins. Also the clones were highly homologous to genes involved particularly in starch biosynthesis, glycolysis, signal transduction and defenses. Compared to 35% of redundancy in the ESTs of normal cDNA library, that from the substracted library was 15%. The Korea Rice Genome Network is maintained to provide the updated information of sequences, their homologies and sequence alignments of ESTs. For the stable expression of transgene in rice, diverse vectors were developed for overexpression, targeting and gene dosage effect with transit peptides (Tp) and matrix attachment region (MAR) sequence from chicken lysozyme locus. The rice calli were transformed via Agrobacterium tumefaciens LBA4404(pSB1) with the triparental mating technique and selected by herbicide resistance. The green fluorescent protein(GFP) gene in expression vector under the control of rbcS promoter-Tp was overexpressed upto 10 % of the total soluble protein. In addition, the Tp-sGFP fusion protein was properly processed during translocation into chloroplast. The expression of sGFP in the presence of MAR sequences was analyzed with Northern and immunoblot analysis. All the lines in which sGFP transgene with MAR sequence, showed position independent and copy number-dependent expression, while the lines without MAR showed the varied level of expression with the integration site. Thus the MAR sequence significantly reduced the variation in transgene expression between independent transformants.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.337-345
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• 2014

Pichia pastoris is one of the most widely used expression systems for the secretory expression of recombinant proteins. The secretory expression in P. pastoris usually makes use of the prepro $MAT{\alpha}$ sequence from Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which has a dibasic amino acid cleavage site at the end of the signal sequence. This is efficiently processed by Kex2 protease, resulting in the secretion of high levels of proteins to the medium. However, the proteins that are having the internal accessible dibasic amino acids such as KR and RR in the coding region cannot be expressed using this signal sequence, as the protein will be fragmented. We have identified a new signal sequence of 18 amino acids from a P. pastoris protein that can secrete proteins to the medium efficiently. The PMT1-gene-inactivated P. pastoris strain secretes a ~30 kDa protein into the extracellular medium. We have identified this protein by determining its N-terminal amino acid sequence. The protein secreted has four DDDK concatameric internal repeats. This protein was not secreted in the wild-type P. pastoris under normal culture conditions. We show that the 18-amino-acid signal peptide at the N-terminal of this protein is useful for secretion of heterologous proteins in Pichia.

• 한국생물공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2000.11a
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• pp.655-659
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• 2000

A 11.5-kb DNA fragment containing an endo-inulinase gene was cloned from Xanthomonas oryzae #5. It contained a single open reading frame of 3,999bp, encoding a polypeptide composed of signal peptide of 32 amino acids and mature protein of 1,301 amino acids. From the comparison of amino acids sequences with fructan hydrolases, inulinase, levanase and CFTase, the sequence of the endo-inulinase had highly homology of 72% with CFTase of B. circulans, and six highly conserved regions including the ${\beta}-fructosidase$ motif were found.

• BMB Reports
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.371-378
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• 2001

The Glycoprotein D (gD) gene of the HSV-1 strain F was cloned, sequenced, recombinated into the HcNPV (Hyphantria cunea nuclear polyhedrosis virus) expression vector and expressed in insect cells. The gD gene was located in the 6.43 kb BamHI fragment of the strainF. The open reading frame (ORF) of the gD gene was 1,185 by and codes 394 amino acid residues. Recombinant baculoviruses, GD-HcNPVs, expressing the gD protein were constructed. Spodoptera frugiperda cells, infected with the recombinant virus, synthesized a matured gX-gD fusion protein with an approximate molecular weight of 54 kDa and secreted the gD proteins into the culture media by an immunoprecipitation assay The fusion gD protein was localized on the membrane of the insect cells, seen by using an immunofluorescence assay The deduced amino acid sequence presents additional characteristics compatible with the structure of a viral glycoprotein: signal peptide, putative glycosylation sites and a long C-terminal transmembrane sequence. These results indicate the utility of the HcNPV-insect cell system for producing and characterizing eukaryotic proteins.

• Bioinformatics and Biosystems
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.46-51
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• 2007

In the proteomics research using mass spectrometry, the protein database search gives the protein information from the peptide sequences that show the best match with the tandem mass spectra. The protein sequence database has been a powerful knowledgebase for this protein identification. However, as we accumulate the protein sequence information in the database, the database size gets to be huge. Now it becomes hard to consider all the protein sequences in the database search because it consumes much computing time. For the high-throughput analysis of the proteome, usually we have used the non-redundant refined database such as IPI human database of European Bioinformatics Institute. While the non-redundant database can supply the search result in high speed, it misses the variation of the protein sequences. In this study, we have concerned the proteomics data in the point of protein similarities and used the network analysis tool to build a new analysis method. This method will be able to save the computing time for the database search and keep the sequence variation to catch the modified peptides.

• Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.116-124
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• 2003

Isolation and cloning of seven-band grouper (Epinephelus septemfasciatus) growth hormone cDNA from pituitary gland revealed an open reading frame of 612 bp coding for a pre-growth hormone of 204 amino acids with a 17 amino acid putative signal peptide. Deduced amino acid sequence showed that there was one possible N-glycosylation site at $Asn^{l84}$ and four cysteine residues $(Cys^{52},\;Cys^{160},\;Cys^{177},\;Cys^{185})$ on t e same positions as in some other species where they were involved in the stabilization of the tertiary structure. The seven-band grouper growth hormone (sbgGH) presented a $99.5\%$ amino acid sequence identity with the growth hormone of Epinephelus coioides and contained the conserved hormone domain region. Comparison of growth hormone sequences from evolutionarily diverse species revealed 25 amino acid residues conserved in jawless fishes to modern mammals. It also revealed an evolutionary trend to retain the same polypeptide sequence even in the distantly related animals while allowing alterations to occur in polypeptides of the closely related species. In order to create a recombinant system to produce high levels of the growth hormone, it was expressed in Escherichia coli (BL21) cells. The gel analysis revealed theoretically expected molecular weights for both mature and pre-sbgGHs.

• Animal cells and systems
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.197-201
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• 2006

Diaminopimelate decarboxylase (DAPDC, EC 4.1.1.20) catalyzes the conversion of diaminopimelate into lysine (Lys), which is the last step in Lys biosynthetic pathway. The genes for DAPDC have been reported in many bacteria, and more recently in Arabidopsis. Here we report characterization of a gene for DAPDC from rice (OsDAPDC). Sequence analysis of a cDNA clone revealed a full-length open reading frame for OsDAPDC that encoded 490 amino acids, approximately 53.2 kDa protein. The OsDAPDC protein contains a consensus binding site for pyridoxal-5'-phosphate as a cofactor and has a sequence at the amino terminus that resembles a transit peptide for localization to plastids, similar to that of Arabidopsis. Single gene encoding DAPDC was found in chromosome II in rice. The predicted amino acid sequence of OsDAPDC is highly homologous to that of the enzymes for DAPDC encoded by lysA of many bacteria. Expression of OsDAPDC in lysA mutants of Escherichia coli shows that the gene is able to functionally complement the mutants. These results suggest that OsDAPDC encodes a protein for diaminopimelate decarboxylase in rice.