• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Applied Microbiology Conference
• /
• 2003.06a
• /
• pp.120-120
• /
• 2003

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Applied Microbiology Conference
• /
• 2002.10a
• /
• pp.12-12
• /
• 2002

• 대한약리학회:학술대회논문집
• /
• 2006.11a
• /
• pp.46-46
• /
• 2006

• Proceedings of the PSK Conference
• /
• 2001.04a
• /
• pp.75-76
• /
• 2001

• Proceedings of the PSK Conference
• /
• 2000.04a
• /
• pp.88-88
• /
• 2000

• Proceedings of the PSK Conference
• /
• 2005.04a
• /
• pp.75-75
• /
• 2005

• The Korea Genome Conference
• /
• 2005.09a
• /
• pp.43-43
• /
• 2005

• Molecules and Cells
• /
• v.44 no.9
• /
• pp.680-687
• /
• 2021

Coronavirus disease, COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019), caused by SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2), has a higher case fatality rate in European countries than in others, especially East Asian ones. One potential explanation for this regional difference is the diversity of the viral infection efficiency. Here, we analyzed the allele frequencies of a nonsynonymous variant rs12329760 (V197M) in the TMPRSS2 gene, a key enzyme essential for viral infection and found a significant association between the COVID-19 case fatality rate and the V197M allele frequencies, using over 200,000 present-day and ancient genomic samples. East Asian countries have higher V197M allele frequencies than other regions, including European countries which correlates to their lower case fatality rates. Structural and energy calculation analysis of the V197M amino acid change showed that it destabilizes the TMPRSS2 protein, possibly negatively affecting its ACE2 and viral spike protein processing.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
• /
• v.16 no.5
• /
• pp.651-660
• /
• 2006

Natural products are a rich source of biologically active small molecules and a fertile area for lead discovery of new drugs [10, 52]. For instance, 5% of the 1,031 new chemical entities approved as drugs by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) were natural products between 1981 and 2002, and another 23% were natural product-derived molecules [53]. These molecules have evolved through millions of years of natural selection to interact with biomolecules in the cells or organisms and offer unrivaled chemical and structural diversity [14, 37]. Nonetheless, a large percentage of nature remains unexplored, in particular, in the marine and microbial environments. Therefore, natural products are still major valuable sources of innovative therapeutic agents for human diseases. However, even when a natural product is found to exhibit biological activity, the cellular target and mode of action of the compound are mostly mysterious. This is also true of many natural products that are currently under clinical trials or have already been approved as clinical drugs [11]. The lack of information on a definitive cellular target for a biologically active natural product prevents the rational design and development of more potent therapeutics. Therefore, there is a great need for new techniques to expedite the rapid identification and validation of cellular targets for biologically active natural products. Chemical genomics is a new integrated research engine toward functional studies of genome and drug discovery [40, 69]. The identification and validation of cellular receptors of biologically active small molecules is one of the key goals of the discipline. This eventually facilitates subsequent rational drug design, and provides valuable information on the receptors in cellular processes. Indeed, several biologically crucial proteins have already been identified as targets for natural products using chemical genomics approach (Table 1). Herein, the representative case studies of chemical genomics using natural products derived from microbes, marine sources, and plants will be introduced.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
• /
• v.27 no.8
• /
• pp.1472-1482
• /
• 2017

Bacterial cytochrome P450 (CYP) steroid hydroxylases are effectively useful in the pharmaceutical industry for introducing hydroxyl groups to a wide range of steroids. We found a putative CYP steroid hydroxylase (BaCYP106A2) from the bacterium Bacillus sp. PAMC 23377 isolated from Kara Sea of the Arctic Ocean, showing 94% sequence similarity with BmCYP106A2 (Bacillus megaterium ATCC 13368). In this study, soluble BaCYP106A2 was overexpressed to evaluate its substrate-binding activity. The substrate affinity ($K_d$ value) to 4-androstenedione was $387{\pm}37{\mu}M$. Moreover, the crystal structure of BaCYP106A2 was determined at $2.7{\AA}$ resolution. Structural analysis suggested that the ${\alpha}8-{\alpha}9$ loop region of BaCYP106A2 is intrinsically mobile and might be important for initial ligand binding. The hydroxyl activity of BaCYP106A2 was identified using in vitro enzyme assays. Its activity was confirmed with two kinds of steroid substrates, 4-androstenedione and nandrolone, using chromatography and mass spectrometry methods. The main products were mono-hydroxylated compounds with high conversion yields. This is the second study on the structure of CYP106A steroid hydroxylases, and should contribute new insight into the interactions of bacterial CYP106A with steroid substrates, providing baseline data for studying the CYP106A steroid hydroxylase from the structural and enzymatic perspectives.