• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.26 no.12
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• pp.2192-2198
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• 2016

The myeloid-specific IgA Fc receptor ($Fc{\alpha}R$) is a cell surface molecule on immunocytes that provides a fundamental connection between humoral and cellular immunity. In this study, the full-length cDNA sequence of swine $Fc{\alpha}RI$ ($swFc{\alpha}RI$) was isolated and characterized and found to contain a 792-base-pair open reading frame, encoding a 264-amino-acid transmembrane glycoprotein with a predicted molecular mass of 29.4 kDa. The $swFc{\alpha}RI$ shares high amino acid sequence homology (>50%) with its counterparts from cattle, seal, and horse. Rosetting analysis confirmed that COS-7 cells transfected with an $swFc{\alpha}RI$ expression plasmid was able to combine with chicken erythrocytes sensitized with porcine IgA, but not IgG.

• Parasites, Hosts and Diseases
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• v.47 no.4
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• pp.337-344
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• 2009

In a previous study, we reported our discovery of Acanthamoeba contamination in domestic tap water; in that study, we determined that some Acanthamoeba strains harbor endosymbiotic bacteria, via our molecular characterization by mitochondrial DNA restriction fragment length polymorphism (Mt DNA RFLP). Five (29.4%) among 17 Acanthamoeba isolates contained endosymbionts in their cytoplasm, as demonstrated via orcein staining. In order to estimate their pathogenicity, we conducted a genetic characterization of the endosymbionts in Acanthamoeba isolated from domestic tap water via 16S rDNA sequencing. The endosymbionts of Acanthamoeba sp. KA/WP3 and KA/WP4 evidenced the highest level of similarity, at 97% of the recently published 16S rDNA sequence of the bacterium, Candidatus Amoebophilus asiaticus. The endosymbionts of Acanthamoeba sp. KA/WP8 and KA/WP12 shared a 97% sequence similarity with each other, and were also highly similar to Candidatus Odyssella thessalonicensis, a member of the $\alpha$-proteobacteria. The endosymbiont of Acanthamoeba sp. KA/WP9 exhibits a high degree of similarity (85-95%) with genus Methylophilus, which is not yet known to harbor any endosymbionts. This is the first report, to the best of our knowledge, to show that Methylophilus spp. can live in the cytoplasm of Acanthamoeba.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.407-414
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• 2009

A cDNA clone encoding phytocystatin was isolated from Brassica rapa seedlings, through rapid amplification of cDNA ends (RACE). This gene (name as Brcpi1; GenBank accession no.: EF079953) had a total length of 881 bp with an open reading frame of 609 bp, and encoded predicted polypeptide of 203 amino acid (aa) residues including a putative N-terminal signal peptide. Other relevant regions found its sequence included the G and PW conserved aa motifs, and the consensus LARFAV sequence for phytocystatins and the reactive site QVVAG. The BrCPI1 protein shared 95, 94, 81, 80 and 78% identity with other CPI proterins isolated from Brassica oleracea (BoCPI-1), Arabidopsis thaliana (AtCY SB), Glycine max (GmCPI), Oryza sativa (OsCYS-2) and Zea may (ZmCPI) at amino acid level, respectively. Southern blot analysis showed that Brcpi1 was a low copy gene. Expression pattern analysis revealed that Brcpi1 was a tissue-specific expressing gene during reproductive growth and strongly expressed at mature seedling stages. Furthermore, overexpression of Brcpi1 in transgenic Arabidopsis was enhanced tolerance to salt and cold stresses. Meanwhile the juvenile seedling of Brcpi1 transgenic plants was not affected by various concentrations ABA in MS medium. Taken together, the results showed that Brcpi1 functioned as a cysteine protease inhibitor and it exhibited a protective agent against diverse types of abiotic stress, which induced this gene in a tissue- and stress-specific manner.

• The Plant Pathology Journal
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.272-280
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• 2007

Isolates of Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) collected in Korea, were compared with their pathological features in tobacco and zucchini squash. Full-length cDNA clone of RNA3 was generated by using long-distance RT-PCR. Transcript RNA3 from the cDNA clone was inoculated onto host plants with transcripts RNA1 and RNA2 of Fny strain, generating RNA3-pseudorecombinant CMV. Timing and severity of systemic symptom was not significantly different among the pseudorecombinant CMVs in tobacco, compared with strains Fny-CMV and Pf-CMV. However, the pseudorecombinant CMVs induced two different systemic symptoms (mosaic vs. chlorotic spot) in zucchini squash. Based on symptom induction, the pseudorecombinant CMVs were categorized into two classes. The severity and timing of symptoms were correlated with viral RNA accumulations in systemic leaves of zucchini squash, suggesting that different kinetics of virus movement associated with CMV proteins are crucial for systemic infection and symptom development in zucchini squash. The analysis of movement proteins (MP) of CMV strains showed high sequence homology, but the differences of several amino acids were found in the C-terminal region between Class-I-CMV and Class-II-CMV. The analysis of coat proteins (CP) showed that the CMV isolates tested belonged to CMV subgroup I and the viruses shared overall 87-99% sequence identity in their genomes. Phylogenetic analysis of MP and CP suggested that biological properties of Korean CMV isolates have relationships associated with host species.

• Research in Plant Disease
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.223-225
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• 2008

This study was carried out to identify the Rice black-streaked dwarf virus that infected maize plants collected from Gochang-gun in Jeollabukdo in 2005. The genomic dsRNA from infected plants was extracted and the genome pattern was analyzed by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Results of the electrophoresis revealed the already known to-segment genome and the difference of mobility was confirmed in isolates by collected areas. The RBSDV was identified from the result of RT-PCR using the template of extracted dsRNA and specific primer. The results of S10 cloned to pGEM-T vector and the conducted in sequence analysis consisted of 1,801nt and 559aa. This was of the same size as the RBSDV S10 identified in rice, and the change was confirmed in 18 base and displayed homology of 99%.

• Horticultural Science & Technology
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.135-143
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• 2011

In the Doritaenopsis hybrid, like most of the orchid species and hybrids, temperature is crucial for the vegetative-to-reproductive transition, and low temperature is required for bud differentiation. To understand the molecular mechanism of this process, an orchid GIGANTEA (GI) gene, DhGI1, was isolated and characterized by using the rapid amplification of cDNA ends (RACE) PCR technique. Sequence analysis showed that the full-length cDNA is 4,022 bp with a major open reading frame of 3,483 bp, and the amino acid sequence showed high similarity to GI proteins in Zea mays, Oryza sativa, Arabidopsis thaliana and other plants. Semi-quantitative RT-PCR revealed that DhGI1 was expressed throughout development and could be detected in roots, stems, leaves, peduncles and flower buds. The expression level of DhGI1 was higher when the plants were flowering at low temperature (22/$18^{\circ}C$ day/night) than the other growth stages. Further analysis indicated that the accumulation of DhGI1 transcripts was significantly increased at low temperature, and concomitantly, initiation of the peduncle was observed. However, DhGI1 levels were low under high temperature (30/$25^{\circ}C$) conditions, and flower initiation was inhibited. These results indicate that the expression of DhGI1 is regulated by low temperature and that DhGI1 may play an important role in inflorescence initiation in this Doritaenopsis hybrid at low temperatures.

• Journal of Food Hygiene and Safety
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.51-54
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• 2000

In the 5'-flanking region of the D-AAT, AspAT and AlaDH gene, I found three or two pairs of sequences(designated as Pl, P2, P3) which show significant similarity to the E.coli consensus sequences of -35 and -10 for promoters. The spacing between -35 and -10 is 16 to 18bp in all the three putative promoters Pl, P2 and P3 which is in good agreement with the preferred spacer length in E.coli and in B.subtilis. Therefore, the putative promoters may also function to increase the efficiency of transcriptional initiation. The most stable, double-helical“Shine-Dalgarno”pairing is formed with a free energy change(ΔG) of -13.0 kcal/mol, -9.6 kcal/mol, -15.8 kcal/mol.

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.416-422
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• 2005

We previously used Southern blot analysis to detect restriction-length polymorphisms between male fertile and cytoplasmic male sterile (CMS) cytoplasms at the coxII and atp6 loci of the mtDNA of Capsicum annuum L. Two copies of atp6 were found in each male fertile and CMS pepper lines. Interestingly, one of the copies of atp6 in CMS pepper was a 3'-truncated pseudogene. The open reading frame of the coxII gene was the same in the fertile (N-) and CMS (S-) lines. However, the nucleotide sequence in the S-cytoplasm diverged from that in the N-cytoplasm 41 bp downstream of the stop codon. To develop CMS-specific sequence-characterized amplified region (SCAR) markers, inverse PCR was performed to characterize the nucleotide sequences of the 5' and 3' flanking regions of mitochondrial atp6 and coxII from the cytoplasms of male fertile (N-) and CMS (S-) pepper plants. Based on these data, two CMS-specific SCAR markers, 607 and 708 bp long, were developed to distinguish N-cytoplasm from S-cytoplasm by PCR. The CMS-specific PCR bands were verified for 20 cultivars containing either N- or S-cytoplasm. PCR amplification of CMS-specific mitochondrial nucleotide sequences will allow quick and reliable identification of the cytoplasmic types of individual plants at the seedling stage, and assessment of the purity of $F_1$ seed lots. The strategy used in this report for identifying CMS-specific markers could be adopted for many other crops where CMS is used for F1 seed production.

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.34-40
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• 2008

To express an increased level of recombinant Mefp1 (marine mussel adhesive protein) in soluble form, we constructed expression vectors encoding truncated OmpA signal peptide-Mefp1 fusion proteins. OmpA signal peptide (OmpASP) is the 21 residue peptide fragment of the 23 residue OmpA signal sequence cleavable by signal peptidase I. We successfully produced increased levels of soluble recombinant Mefp1 (rMefp1) with various deletions of OmpASP, and found that the increased expression was caused by the increased pI of the N-terminus of the fusion proteins (${\geq}10.55$). All the OmpA signal peptide segments of 3-21 amino acids in length had the same pI value (10.55). Our results suggest that the pI value of the truncated OmpASP ($OmpASP_{tr}$) play an important role in directional signaling for the fusion protein, but we found no evidence for the presence of a secretion enhancer in OmpASP. For practical applications, we increased the expression of soluble rMefp1 with $OmpASP_{tr}$ peptides as directional signals, and obtained rMefp1 with the native amino terminus (nN-rMefp1) using an $OmpASP_{tr}$ Xa leader sequence that contains the recognition site for Xa protease.

• Korean Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.867-874
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• 2016

Although shrimps belonging to family Crangonidae are known to be genetically divergent and ecologically important among the various benthos, any of their mitochondrial genome has not been reported yet. We here determined the complete mitochondrial genome sequence of Crangon hakodatei (Rathbun, 1902), which was collected from East China Sea ($124^{\circ}E$ and $34.5^{\circ}N$). Total mitochondrial genome length of C. hakodatei was 16,060 bp, in which 13 proteins, 2 ribosomal RNAs, 22 transfer RNAs and a putative control region were encoded. Secondary structure prediction analysis showed that twenty tRNA genes exhibit the conserved structure but two genes, $tRNA^{Cys}$ and $tRNA^{Ser}$ (AGN), lack T and D arm, respectively. Based on the sequence similarity of the COI region from the currently reported five species belonging to genus Crangonidae, C. hakodatei was most closely related to Crangon crangon. Phylogenetic analysis of full COXI genes belonging to infraorder Caridea showed that only crangonid shrimps were clustered together with those of Dendrobranchiata. Gene order were well conserved from Penaeoidea to Caridea but $tRNA^{Pro}$ and $tRNA^{Thr}$ in Palaemonid shrimp were flipped each other by the recombination. Further study about mitochondrial genome sequences of shrimps belonging to Crangonidae should be made to know better about their evolutional relationships with other those in infraorder Caridea.