• The Plant Pathology Journal
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.355-365
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• 2022

Erwinia amylovora and E. pyrifoliae are the causative agents of destructive diseases in both apple and pear trees viz. fire blight and black shoot blight, respectively. Since the introduction of fire blight in Korea in 2015, the occurrence of both pathogens has been independently reported. The co-incidence of these diseases is highly probable given the co-existence of their pathogenic bacteria in the same trees or orchards in a city/district. Hence, this study evaluated whether both diseases occurred in neighboring orchards and whether they occurred together in a single orchard. The competition and virulence of the two pathogens was compared using growth rates in vitro and in planta. Importantly, E amylovora showed significantly higher colony numbers than E. pyrifoliae when they were co-cultured in liquid media and co-inoculated into immature apple fruits and seedlings. In a comparison of the usage of major carbon sources, which are abundant in immature apple fruits and seedlings, E. amylovora also showed better growth rates than E. pyrifoliae. In virulence assays, including motility and a hypersensitive response (HR), E. amylovora demonstrated a larger diameter of travel from the inoculation site than E. pyrifoliae in both swarming and swimming motilities. E. amylovora elicited a HR in tobacco leaves when diluted from 1:1 to 1:16 but E. pyrifoliae does not elicit a HR when diluted at 1:16. Therefore, E. amylovora was concluded to have a greater competitive fitness than E. pyrifoliae.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.194-203
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• 2009

$HpaG_{Xooc}$, from rice pathogenic bacterium Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzicola, is a member of the harpin group of proteins, eliciting hypersensitive cell death in non-host plants, inducing disease and insect resistance in plants, and enhancing plant growth. To express and secret the $HpaG_{Xooc}$ protein in Bacillus subtilis, we constructed a recombinant expression vector pM43HF with stronger promoter P43 and signal peptide element nprB. The SDS-PAGE and Western blot analysis demonstrated the expression of the protein $HpaG_{Xooc}$ in B. subtilis. The ELISA analysis determined the optimum condition for $HpaG_{Xooc}$ expression in B. subtilis WBHF. The biological function analysis indicated that the protein $HpaG_{Xooc}$ from B. subtilis WBHF elicits hypersensitive response(HR) and enhances the growth of tobacco. The results of RT-PCR analysis revealed that $HpaG_{Xooc}$ induces expression of the pathogenesis-related genes PR-1a and PR-1b in plant defense response.

• Korean Journal of Health Education and Promotion
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.229-244
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• 2005

Objectives: An investigative effort was made to provide basic data upon which effective public health education can be constructed for schools. Methods: The research was made by delivering self-administered questionnaires to 536 men and women with unknown names from a national university during 1-month period on September of 2004. The questionnaire items included preventive attitudes, interests, anxiety, health behavior, consciousness, etc. centering upon life-style related diseases. Results and Conclusions: The preventive attitudes against life-style related diseases was of a higher level in female than male students, The smaller number of students had knowledge of the definition of life-style related diseases, willingness to learn, and gathered information on them. The number of students who had anxiety about them was also small and as low as 54.3% of students were willing to undertake periodic health examination. A great variation ranging from 4.7% to 81.7% was shown in the accuracy rate of answers on the questions asking about three leading causes of death, overconsumption of dietary salt, obesity, diabetes, hypercholesterolemia and colon cancer. With regard to health behaviors, a smaller number of students were involved in health behaviors. On the other hand, $25.7{\sim}35.1%$ of students had everyday exercises and breakfasts, 65.5% had no tobacco use. The study results showed that the survey subjects had deficient knowledge as well as a low level of preventive attitudes and interests against life-style related diseases. Moreover, their health behavior and health consciousness were undesirable apart from their low rates of taking periodic health examinations. Accordingly, the college students should be encouraged to take health education and to make more effective the existing health education in the university.

• Korean Journal of Pharmacognosy
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• v.25 no.4 s.99
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• pp.388-394
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• 1994

80% Methanol extracts of 44 traditional drugs used for the treatment of liver diseases or tonic effects were screened for anti-hepatotoxic activity by in vitro assay using $CCl_4-induced$ cytotoxicity in primary cultured rat hepatocytes. $CCl_4-induced$ cytotoxicity was evaluated by determination of LDH, GOT or GPT activity in the medium. Rehmaniae Radix Preparata and Gelantina nigra inhibited the release of LDH, GOT or GPT from $CCl_4-treated$ hepatocytes. Gibotii Rhizoma and Eucommiae Cortex showed inhibitory effect on release of LDH from normal hepatocytes as well as $CCl_4-treated$ hepatocytes. Eucommiae Cortex and Lili Bulbus decreased release of GOT and LDH from normal hepatocytes, respectively. Astragali Radix inhibited release of GPT in $CCl_4-treated$ hepatocytes. Phlomidis Radix, Imperatae Rhizoma, Cistanchis Herba, Broussonetiae Fructus, Asparagi Tuber, Trigonellae Semen and Polgonati Rhizoma inhibited release of LDH from $CCl_4-treated$ hepatocytes. Among 44 traditional drugs, most of them released LDH, GOT or GPT at the dose of 1 mg/ml in normal hepatocytes, and Drynariae Rhizoma, Acanthopanacis Cortex, Longanae Arillus, Atratylodis Rhizoma and Ecliptae Herba increased $CCl_4-induced$ cytotoxicity.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.1304-1309
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• 2005

The production of therapeutic proteins for human diseases in plants results in many economic benefits, including reduced risk of animal virus contamination, high yields, and reduced production and storage costs. Human cytokines, interleukin-11 (hlL-11) and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (hGM-CSF), cDNAs were introduced into rice or tobacco, using either the maize ubiquitin promoter or the 35S promoter. The primary hIL-11 transgenic rice plants exhibited stunted growth and a sterile phenotype, whereas the hIL-11 transgenic tobacco plants did not. This suggests that hIL-11 expression in rice disrupts the normal growth and development of the plant. The regeneration efficiency of rice calli transformed with hGM-CSF was found to be approximately a quarter of that seen with the hIL-11, suggesting that hGM-CSF expression is more deleterious to the regeneration of rice calli than is hIL-11. However, the surviving hGM-CSF transgenic rice plants exhibited a normal phenotype of growth. Therefore, it appears that only those transgenic rice lines that expressed the human cytokines in small quantities were able to survive the selection process.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.sup1
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• pp.79-84
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• 2016

Graphic health warnings (GHW) on tobacco packages have proven to be effective in increasing quit attempts among smokers and reducing initial smoking among adolescents. This research aimed to examine the relative importance of different attributes of graphic health warnings on tobacco packages in Viet Nam. A discrete choice experimental (DCE) design was applied with a conditional logit model. In addition, a ranking method was used to list from the least to the most dreadful GHW labels. With the results from DCE model, graphic type was shown to be the most important attribute, followed by cost and coverage area of GHW. The least important attribute was position of the GHW. Among 5 graphic types (internal lung cancer image, external damaged teeth, abstract image, human suffering image and text), the image of lung cancer was found to have the strongest influence on both smokers and non-smokers. With ranking method, the image of throat cancer and heart diseases were considered the most dreadful images. GHWs should be designed with these attributes in mind, to maximise influence on purchase among both smokers and non-smokers.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.13 no.10
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• pp.4973-4977
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• 2012

Introduction: Tobacco use is a global health care problem. Repetitive exposure to nicotine produces neuroadaptation resulting in nicotine dependence. Smoking is associated with a range of diseases, causing high levels of morbidity and mortality and is one of the leading causes of preventable deaths, with more than 4.6 million smokers worldwide dying each year from smoking related illnesses. Stopping smoking has major health benefits. Quitting at any age provides both short and long term benefits. Materials and methods: 45 patients attending the outpatient department at the Oxford Dental College, Bangalore, were randomly allocated to three groups of interventions namely placebo, counseling and nicotine replacement therapy (NRT). Initially each one was assessed for carbon monoxide levels using a breath analyser (pico smokerlyser bedfont UK). They were followed up for six months and the carbon monoxide levels were again assessed using the same instrument. The paired t test was used to compare the results before and after the intervention. Results: The scores before the initiation of intervention and after treatment were compared and all three interventions were found to be statistically significant after six months. It was noticed that patients with very low or low dependence followed by high dependence had good response in the placebo group (68% and 47.6% respectively), in the counseling group maximum response was seen in the medium followed by the very low group (61% and 59% respectively), and maximum response was seen in very high followed by the very low group with NRT (78.7% and 60.5% respectively). Conclusion: The inference that can be drawn from the present study is that non-invasive, non pharmacological methods like placebo and counseling are effective in low to medium groups, and NRT is effective with higher nicotine dependence.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Tobacco Science
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.212-218
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• 2005

Cigarette smoking has been known to have a few beneficial effects on some neuronal diseases such as Alzheimer's disease(AD), Parkinson's disease(PD) and prion disease by scrapie agent shows many similar properties with AD. In this respect, we investigated what biological effects are exerted by cigarette smoke exposure(CSE) in the brain of mouse infected by 87V scrapie. The scrapie agent was inoculated through stereotaxic microinjection of the homogenates of the scrapie agent infected brain into the intracerebral system in the 1M mice. The inoculation into mice typically exhibits neurochemical, physiological and histopathological characteristics of prion disease: loss of neurotransmitters and induction of astrocytosis and vacuolation in brain as well as reduction of spatial movement and loss of body weight. CSE led to alleviated the loss of body weight and also improved spatial movement of the infected mice. Most interestingly, CSE attenuated astrocytosis and vacuolation caused by scrapie infection in the brain. In addition, decreased levels of dopamine in striatal and hypothalamic regions as well as serotonin level in hippocampus caused by scrapie infection were also attenuated by exposure to cigarette smoke. These findings suggest that cigarette smoke, by its inhibition of astrocytosis and vacuolation followed by its restoration of levels of some neurotransmitters, may partly contribute to suppression in the progress of neurodegeneration caused by scrapie infection.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.9 no.12
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• pp.295-299
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• 2018

The aim of this study was to evaluate the association between the level urine cotinine and periodontal diseases in Korea adults. The date from the 2014, 2015 Korean National Health and Nutrition Survey were used, and 5,146 subjects over 30 years were included in the analysis. Periodontal disease was assessed using the Community Periodontal Index. Binary logistic regression model was used to estimate the odds ratio with 95% confidence intervals. There was a 2.08-fold (95% CI; 1.73-2.05) increased in the odds of periodontal disease for those with any ETS exposure compared with those with non-smokers following adjustment for sex, age, education, and income. The level of urine cotinine also showed a dose-dependent increase in extent of periodontal disease. Among persons in the Korea who had never used tobacco, those exposed to ETS were more likely to have periodontal disease than were those not exposed to ETS. In the future, voluntary compliance of smokers to measures to reduce ETS exposure should be encouraged.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.73 no.4
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• pp.210-218
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• 2012

Background: The level of urine cotinine is an indicator of tobacco smoke exposure. The purpose of this study is to investigate urine cotinine for the purpose of assessing the smoking status of Korean smokers and non-smokers exposed to tobacco smoke. Methods: The subjects were identified from the 2007-2009 and the 2010 data sets of the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES). They were assigned as non-smokers, current smokers and ex-smokers. Non-smokers were also divided into three subset groups according to the duration of smoke exposure. Each group was stratified by gender prior to analysis. Results: The median value of urine cotinine in the male current smokers was 1,221.93 ng/mL which was the highest among all groups. The difference between levels of urine cotinine for male and the female groups was statistically significant (p<0.01). In the female group, passive smoke exposure groups reported higher urine cotinine levels than non-exposure groups (p=0.01). The cutoff point for the discrimination of current smokers from non-smokers was 95.6 ng/mL in males and 96.8 ng/mL in females. The sensitivity and specificity were 95.2% and 97.1%, respectively, in males, 96.1% and 96.5% in females. However, the determination of urine cotinine level was not useful in distinguishing between passive smoke exposure groups and non-exposure groups. Conclusion: Urine cotinine concentration is a useful biomarker for discriminating non-smokers from current smokers. However, careful interpretation is necessary for assessing passive smoke exposure by urine cotinine concentration.