• Molecules and Cells
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.48-56
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• 2023

Genomic information stored in the DNA is transcribed to the mRNA and translated to proteins. The 3' untranslated regions (3'UTRs) of the mRNA serve pivotal roles in post-transcriptional gene expression, regulating mRNA stability, translation, and localization. Similar to DNA mutations producing aberrant proteins, RNA alterations expand the transcriptome landscape and change the cellular proteome. Recent global analyses reveal that many genes express various forms of altered RNAs, including 3'UTR length variants. Alternative polyadenylation and alternative splicing are involved in diversifying 3'UTRs, which could act as a hidden layer of eukaryotic gene expression control. In this review, we summarize the functions and regulations of 3'UTRs and elaborate on the generation and functional consequences of 3'UTR diversity. Given that dynamic 3'UTR length control contributes to phenotypic complexity, dysregulated 3'UTR diversity might be relevant to disease development, including cancers. Thus, 3'UTR diversity in cancer could open exciting new research areas and provide avenues for novel cancer theragnostics.

• Journal of Crop Science and Biotechnology
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.51-56
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• 2008

Azuki bean has never been commercially grown in Thailand, due in part to a lack of suitable varieties. A core collection of 114 azuki bean accessions, originally from different parts of China(northern, central, southern) representing the germplasm of Chinese land races, were evaluated in the experimental field of the Institute of Vegetable Crops, Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China from June to October 2004. The same experiment was repeated at Kamphaeng Saen campus of Kasetsart University, Thailand from February to May 2005. Yield, yield components, and agronomic traits were recorded in all accessions in order to identify certain genotypes for further investigation. The statistical parameters that were used as indicators of phenotypic variation were mean, coefficient of variability(CV), correlation coefficient(r), range, mean difference, and phenotypic clustering of the accessions. The results indicated that the azuki bean varieties planted in Kamphaeng Saen were shorter, earlier in growing duration, and lower in plant height, seed yield per plant, 100-seed weight, and pods per plant as compared to when they were grown in China. This discrepancy was caused largely by the combined effect of temperature, rainfall, and day length. The traits that were rather stable in both locations were branches per plant and seeds per pod. Azuki bean varieties from northern China showed higher response to the changing environments compared with those from central and southern China. Some agronomic traits showed high correlation coefficient between the environments in Thailand and China. The CV of agronomic traits in both locations were ranked in descending order as follows: seed yield per plant, pods per plant, branches per plant, plant height, 100-seed weight, seeds per pod, and growing duration. The CV of seeds per pod and branches per plant were almost the same in both locations. Yield per plant in China correlated well(r=0.75) with pods per plant, but not with the other traits. Based on their response to both environments, the azuki bean accessions can be broadly divided into four groups, viz. northern 1, northern 2, central, and southern. This implied that there was more diversity, but probably less stability among the accessions originating from northern China.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.17 no.7
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• pp.1841-1857
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• 2023

CenterNet, a novel object detection algorithm without anchor based on key points, regards the object as a single center point for prediction and directly regresses the object's height and width. However, because the objects have different sizes, directly regressing their height and width will make the model difficult to converge and lose the intrinsic relationship between object's width and height, thereby reducing the stability of the model and the consistency of prediction accuracy. For this problem, we proposed an algorithm based on the regression of the diagonal half-length and the center angle, which significantly compresses the solution space of the regression components and enhances the intrinsic relationship between the decoded components. First, encode the object's width and height into the diagonal half-length and the center angle, where the center angle is the angle between the diagonal and the vertical centreline. Secondly, the predicted diagonal half-length and center angle are decoded into two length components. Finally, the position of the object bounding box can be accurately obtained by combining the corresponding center point coordinates. Experiments show that, when using CenterNet as the improved baseline and resnet50 as the Backbone, the improved model achieved 81.6% and 79.7% mAP on the VOC 2007 and 2012 test sets, respectively. When using Hourglass-104 as the Backbone, the improved model achieved 43.3% mAP on the COCO 2017 test sets. Compared with CenterNet, the improved model has a faster convergence rate and significantly improved the stability and prediction accuracy.

• Korean Journal Plant Pathology
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.583-588
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• 1998

This study was conducted to investigate the potential of nitrate-nonutilizing mutants (nit mutants) in ecological studies of Fusarium disease of strawberry. Nit mutants of Fusarium oxysporum from strawberry were easily formed on chlorate-containing media. Nit mutants were assigned to three phenotypic classes, nit1, nit3, and NitM, on the basis of their growth on media containing one of the following five different nitrogen sources ; nitrate, nitrite, hypoxanthine, ammonium and uric acid. Frequency of nit mutation and proportion of three phenotypes of nit mutants depended on the isolate. Mutation rate was 45.6% and ranged from 15.0% to 95.0%. The frequency of nit1 mutants was higher than that of nit3 or NitM. The complementary reaction between nit1 and NitM was higher than that of other combination. There has been no complementary response observed between nit3 and nit3. The nit mutants showed similar growth pattern as the that of wild type isolate on potato sucrose agar and potato sucrose liquid media. Most of the mutants retained pathogenicity, and maintained their phenotypes even after two year preservation through subculture on slanted PSA at room temperature. Nit mutants were selctively isolated from infested soil and infected plants on the selective medium (MMCPA) containing potassium chlorate with their original phenotypes, while naturally occurring isolates of Fusarium oxysporum were not grow on the medium. On the contrary, nit mutants showed very slight growth on the medium (MMPA) containing nitrate as a sole nitrogen source, and therefore could be distinguished from wild type isolate.

• The Plant Pathology Journal
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.313-320
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• 2010

Genetic instability of the rice blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae has been suggested as a major factor underlying the rapid breakdown of host resistance in the field. However, little information is available on the mechanism of genetic instability. In this study, we assessed the stability of repetitive DNA elements and several key phenotypic traits important for pathogenesis after serially transferring two isolates though rice plants and an artificial medium. Using isolate 70-15, we obtained a total of 176 single-spore isolates from 10 successive rounds of culturing on artificial medium. Another 20 isolates were obtained from germ tubes formed at the basal and apical cells of 10 three-celled conidia. Additionally, 60 isolates were obtained from isolate KJ201 after serial transfers through rice plants and an artificial medium. No apparent differences in phenotypes, including mycelial growth, conidial morphologies, conidiation, conidial germination, appressorium formation, and virulence, or in DNA fingerprints using MGR586, MAGGY, Pot2, LINE, MG-SINE and PWL2 as probes were observed among isolates from the same parent isolate. Southern hybridization and sequence analysis of two avirulence genes, AVR-Pita1 and AVR-Pikm, showed that both genes were also maintained stably during 10 successive generations on medium and plants. However, one reversible loss of restriction fragments was found in the telomere-linked helicase gene (TLH1) family, suggesting some telomere regions may be more unstable than the rest of the genome. Taken together, our results suggest that phenotype and genotype of M. oryzae isolates do not noticeably change, at least up to 10 successive generations on a cultural medium and in host plants.

• KOREAN JOURNAL OF CROP SCIENCE
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.245-250
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• 2000

This study was conducted to analyze the responses of some agronomic traits to the different cultural environments and relations among the agronomic traits for selecting sesame varieties with higher cultural stabilities. The indexes for stability parameters measured were coefficient of variability, heritabilities, genetic correlations and path coefficients of agronomic traits according to locations and years in Korea. The heritabilities of agronomic traits showed different by locations and years. Number of seeds per capsule and 1000 seeds weight showed higher heritabilities, but stem length and seed weight per plant showed relatively lower heritabilities. Average heritabilities of some agronomic traits in 1998 were comparatively higher than those of 1999. Of six areas, Jinju area showed biggest coefficient of yield variability in 1998-1999. Iksan and Taegu areas showed higher heritabilities in 1998, but Iksan and Jinju areas showed lower heritabilities in 1999. Genetic correlations were slightly higher than corresponding phenotypic correlations. Stem length showed positive genetic correlation with the number of capsules per plant, and seed weight per plant and the number of capsule per plant showed positive genetic correlation with seed weight per plant. On the analysis of path coefficients, stem length and number of capsules effected highly on grain yield. Great regional variations were observed on the effects of agronomic traits on grain yield. Higher direct effects of stem length on grain yield were observed at Suwon, Chungwon, Taegu, Jinju and Naju areas, but in Iksan area was observed higher direct effect of the number of capsules per plant on grain yield in 1998. In 1999, higher direct effect of stem length on grain yield was observed at Chungwon and Suwon areas. Iksan and Taegu areas were also observed higher direct effect of the number of capsule per plant on grain yield.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.28 no.7
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• pp.936-942
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• 2015

The purpose of this study was to characterize genetic architecture of behavior patterns in Sapsaree dogs. The breed population (n=8,256) has been constructed since 1990 over 12 generations and managed at the Sapsaree Breeding Research Institute, Gyeongsan, Korea. Seven behavioral traits were investigated for 882 individuals. The traits were classified as a quantitative or a categorical group, and heritabilities ($h^2$) and variance components were estimated under the Animal model using ASREML 2.0 software program. In general, the $h^2$ estimates of the traits ranged between 0.00 and 0.16. Strong genetic ($r_G$) and phenotypic ($r_P$) correlations were observed between nerve stability, affability and adaptability, i.e. 0.9 to 0.94 and 0.46 to 0.68, respectively. To detect significant single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) for the behavioral traits, a total of 134 and 60 samples were genotyped using the Illumina 22K CanineSNP20 and 170K CanineHD bead chips, respectively. Two datasets comprising 60 (Sap60) and 183 (Sap183) samples were analyzed, respectively, of which the latter was based on the SNPs that were embedded on both the 22K and 170K chips. To perform genome-wide association analysis, each SNP was considered with the residuals of each phenotype that were adjusted for sex and year of birth as fixed effects. A least squares based single marker regression analysis was followed by a stepwise regression procedure for the significant SNPs (p<0.01), to determine a best set of SNPs for each trait. A total of 41 SNPs were detected with the Sap183 samples for the behavior traits. The significant SNPs need to be verified using other samples, so as to be utilized to improve behavior traits via marker-assisted selection in the Sapsaree population.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.620-631
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• 2015

A total of 59 lactic acid bacteria (LAB) strains were isolated from corn stover silage. According to phenotypic and chemotaxonomic characteristics, 16S ribosomal DNA (rDNA) sequences and recA gene polymerase chain reaction amplification, these LAB isolates were identified as five species: Lactobacillus (L.) plantarum subsp. plantarum, Pediococcus pentosaceus, Enterococcus mundtii, Weissella cibaria and Leuconostoc pseudomesenteroides, respectively. Those strains were also screened for antimicrobial activity using a dual-culture agar plate assay. Based on excluding the effects of organic acids and hydrogen peroxide, two L. plantarum subsp. plantarum strains ZZU 203 and 204, which strongly inhibited Salmonella enterica ATCC $43971^T$, Micrococcus luteus ATCC $4698^T$ and Escherichia coli ATCC $11775^T$ were selected for further research on sensitivity of the antimicrobial substance to heat, pH and protease. Cell-free culture supernatants of the two strains exhibited strong heat stability (60 min at $100^{\circ}C$), but the antimicrobial activity was eliminated after treatment at $121^{\circ}C$ for 15 min. The antimicrobial substance remained active under acidic condition (pH 2.0 to 6.0), but became inactive under neutral and alkaline condition (pH 7.0 to 9.0). In addition, the antimicrobial activities of these two strains decreased remarkably after digestion by protease K. These results preliminarily suggest that the desirable antimicrobial activity of strains ZZU 203 and 204 is the result of the production of a bacteriocin-like substance, and these two strains with antimicrobial activity could be used as silage additives to inhibit proliferation of unwanted microorganism during ensiling and preserve nutrients of silage. The nature of the antimicrobial substances is being investigated in our laboratory.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.17 no.8
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• pp.1976-1995
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• 2023

The anchor-free object detector CenterNet regards the object as a center point and predicts it based on the Gaussian circle region. For each object's center point, CenterNet directly regresses the width and height of the objects and finally gets the boundary range of the objects. However, the critical range of the object's center point can not be accurately limited by using the Gaussian circle region to constrain the prediction region, resulting in many low-quality centers' predicted values. In addition, because of the large difference between the width and height of different objects, directly regressing the width and height will make the model difficult to converge and lose the intrinsic relationship between them, thereby reducing the stability and consistency of accuracy. For these problems, we proposed a center point prediction method based on the Gaussian elliptic region and a size component regression method based on the small solution space. First, we constructed a Gaussian ellipse region that can accurately predict the object's center point. Second, we recode the width and height of the objects, which significantly reduces the regression solution space and improves the convergence speed of the model. Finally, we jointly decode the predicted components, enhancing the internal relationship between the size components and improving the accuracy consistency. Experiments show that when using CenterNet as the improved baseline and Hourglass-104 as the backbone, on the MS COCO dataset, our improved model achieved 44.7%, which is 2.6% higher than the baseline.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.265-274
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• 2022

Lipoxygenase is an enzyme, mainly produced by plants, capable of converting unsaturated fatty acids to fatty acids. It has vast application potential in the food, pharmaceutical and agricultural industries. The aim of this study was to isolate novel lipoxygenase-producing bacteria from the environment and to investigate the lipoxygenase enzymatic properties for industrial production. The strain, NC1, isolated from cultivation soils, was identified as Bacillus subtilis based on the phenotypic characteristics and 16S rRNA gene sequencing. This strain formed a pink color around the colony when cultured on indamine dye formation plates. The production of lipoxygenase by B. subtilis NC1 was influenced by the composition of the medium and linoleic acid concentrations. The optimum temperature and pH for lipoxygenase activity was determined to be 40 ℃ and pH 6, respectively. The enzyme showed relatively high stability at temperatures ranging from 20-50 ℃ and acid-neutral regions. In addition, the lipoxygenase produced by B. subtilis NC1 was able to degrade commercially available oils including sunflower seed oil and Perilla oil. In this study, a useful indigenous bacterium was isolated, and the fundamental physicochemical data of bacterial lipoxygenase giving it industrial potential are presented.