• Animal Systematics, Evolution and Diversity
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.354-362
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• 2020

A common snapping turtle Chelydra serpentina inhabiting North America is internationally protected as an endangered species. It is known that the individuals of common snapping turtles were imported to South Korea as pets, and after being abandoned, some inhabit the natural ecosystem of South Korea like wild animals. No genetic survey has yet been performed for the common snapping turtles imported to South Korea. Hereby, cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) information, which is 594 bp long, was determined for a total of 16 C. serpentina individuals, of which one was found in nature, twelve legally imported and their descendants, and the other three were provided from the Kansas Herpetological Society, USA. The obtained data were combined with thirteen COI sequences of C. serpentina retrieved from NCBI GenBank for the subsequent population genetic analyses. The results showed that there exist five haplotypes with high sequence similarity (only three parsimoniously informative sites). In the TCS and phylogenetic analyses, all the examined C. serpentina samples coincidently formed a strong monoclade with those collected mostly from Kansas State, USA, indicating that the imported ones to South Korea are from the central North America. In addition, there found the amino acid changes and the high degree of nucleotide sequence differences between C. serpentina and C. rossignoni with some important morphological characters. It is expected that the present results could provide an important framework for systematic management and control of exotic snapping turtles imported and released to nature of South Korea.

• Journal of Mushroom
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.178-182
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• 2022

Despite the long history of mushroom use, studies examining the genetic function of mushrooms and the development of new varieties via bio-molecular methods are significantly lacking compared to those examining other organisms. However, owing to recent developments, attempts have been made to use a novel gene-editing technique involving CRISPR/Cas9 technology and genetic scissors in mushroom studies. In particular, research is actively being conducted to utilize ribonucleoprotein particles (RNPs) that can be genetically edited with high efficiency without foreign gene insertion for ease of selection. However, RNPs are too large for Cas9 protein to pass through the cell membrane of the protoplasmic reticulum. Furthermore, guide RNA is unstable and can be easily decomposed, which remarkably affects gene editing efficiency. In this study, nanoparticles were used to mitigate the shortcomings of RNP-based gene editing techniques and to obtain transformants stably. We used Lentinula edodes (shiitake mushroom) Sanjo705-13 monokaryon strain, which has been successfully used in previous genome editing experiments. To identify a suitable osmotic buffer for the isolation of protoplast, 0.6 M and 1.2 M sucrose, mannitol, sorbitol, and KCl were treated, respectively. In addition, with various nanoparticle-forming materials, experiments were conducted to confirm genome editing efficiency via the formation of nanoparticles with calcium phosphate (CaP), which can be bound to Cas9 protein without any additional amino acid modification. RNPs/NP complex was successfully formed and protected nuclease activity with nucleotide sequence specificity.