• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.162-174
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• 1997

Background : Metabolic cooperation via gap junctional intercellular communication (GJIC) is an important mechanism of the bystander effect in gene therapy using the Herpes Simplex Virus thymidine kinase/ganciclovir (HSVtk) "prodrug" system. Since retinoids have been reported to increase GJIC by induction of connexin 43 expression, we hyporthesized that treatment of tumor cells with retinoic acid could augment the bystander effect of the HSVtk/GCV system and result in improved tumor cell killing by enhancing GJIC. Methods : We transferred HSVtk gene to SKHep-J cell line that does not express connexin43, and also transferred the gene to human and murine mesothelioma cell lines that express connexin43. We verified that retinoic acid enhanced GJIC utilizing a functional double-dye transfer study and evaluated the effects of retinoic acid on the growth rate of tumor cells. We then tested the effects of retinoic acid on bystander-mediated cell killing. Results : Addition of all-trans retinoic acid (RA) increased GJIC in cell lines expressing connexin 43 and was asspciated with more efficient in vitro bystander killing in cells transduced with HSVtk via adenoviral and retroviral vectors. In contrast, there was no increase in the efficiency of the bystander effect after exposure to RA in a cell line which had no delectable connexin 43. Conclusion : These results provide evidence that retinoids can augment the efficiency of cell killing with the HSVtk/GCV system by enhancing bystander effect and may thus be a promising new approach to improve responses in gene therapy utilizing the HSVtk system to treat tumors.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.247-259
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• 2000

This paper introduces a new technique that reduces the search times and Improves the accuracy of motion estimation using high temporal and spatial correlation of motion vector. Instead of using the fixed first search Point of previously proposed search algorithms, the proposed method finds more accurate first search point as to compensating searching area using high temporal and spatial correlation of motion vector. Therefore, the main idea of proposed method is to find first search point to improve the performance of motion estimation and reduce the search times. The proposed method utilizes the direction of the same coordinate block of the previous frame compared with a block of the current frame to use temporal correlation and the direction of the adjacent blocks of the current frame to use spatial correlation. Based on these directions, we compute the first search point. We search the motion vector in the middle of computed first search point with two fixed search patterns. Using that idea, an efficient adaptive predicted direction search algorithm (APDSA) for block matching motion estimation is proposed. In the experimental results show that the PSNR values are improved up to the 3.6dB as depend on the Image sequences and advanced about 1.7dB on an average. The results of the comparison show that the performance of the proposed APDSA algorithm is better than those of other fast search algorithms whether the image sequence contains fast or slow motion, and is similar to the performance of the FS (Full Search) algorithm. Simulation results also show that the performance of the APDSA scheme gives better subjective picture quality than the other fast search algorithms and is closer to that of the FS algorithm.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.703-712
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• 2012

Adeno-associated virus (AAV) has been considered to be a very safe and efficient gene delivery system. However, the major obstacles to therapeutic usage of AAV have been to achieve highly efficient and reproducible production processes, and also to develop a reliable quantifying method of various serotypes with a simple protocol. We compared the efficiency of the conventional production protocol of AAV2 and adenovirus (Ad) co-infection to that of a new method containing AAV2 infection followed by pHelper transfection. We tested HEK293 and 293T, and further examined the time-dependent changes of AAV2 production. The new method of AAV2 and pHelper DNA gave about ten times higher production efficiency than that of the conventional protocol. The highest production efficiency in 293T was achieved as $1.61{\times}10^5$ virus genomes (v.g.)/cell by the new method of 10 MOI of AAV2 infection and 5 days post-infection. This protocol of the highest efficiency was then applied to produce various AAV serotypes and showed the efficiencies higher than $10^5$ v.g./cell. Next, we designed the universal PCR primers of highly conserved regions for various AAV serotypes to develop a simple and reliable titration method. The universal primers could amplify all the tested AAV serotypes with similar sensitivities by ten molecular copies. Therefore, this pair of universal primers can be further utilized to detect AAV contaminants in therapeutic adenoviral vectors.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.27 no.8
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• pp.864-872
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• 2017

Equine chorionic gonadotropin (eCG) consists of highly glycosylated ${\alpha}-$ and ${\beta}-subunits$ and is a unique member of the gonadotropin family, because it elicits the response characteristics of follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH) in species other than the horse. To directly assess the biological function of $rec-eCG{\beta}/{\alpha}$, we constructed mammalian expressing vectors of equine luteinizing hormone/chorionic gonadotropin receptors (eLH/CGR). The activity of $rec-eCG{\beta}/{\alpha}$ in vitro assayed in transient transfected CHO-K1 cells and in stably transfected PathHunter Parental cells with eLH/CGR was investigated. $rec-eCG{\beta}/{\alpha}$ was efficiently secreted in the CHO-K1 suspension cell media, and the quantity detected was about 200 mIU/ml from 1 to 7 days after transfection. In the western blot analysis, the $rec-eCG{\beta}/{\alpha}$ protein was broadly identified to be about 40~45 kDa molecular weight. The cAMP stimulation in CHO-K1 cells expressing eLH/CGR was determined to evaluate the activity of $rec-eCG{\beta}/{\alpha}$. The cAMP concentration increased in direct proportion to the concentration of the $rec-eCG{\beta}/{\alpha}$. The $EC_{50}$ value in the transient transfected CHO-K1 cells was $8.1{\pm}6.5ng$. The stable cell lines of eLH/CGR were established in the PathHunter Parental cells expressing ${\beta}-arrestin$. We found that $rec-eCG{\beta}/{\alpha}$ had full LH activity in the PathHunter Parental cells expressing eLH/CGR. The $EC_{50}$ value in transient and stable cells was $5.0{\pm}4.7ng/ml$ and $4.5{\pm}5.2ng/ml$, respectively. These results suggest that $rec-eCG{\beta}/{\alpha}$ has a biological activity in a cell expressing eLH/CGR. These stable cells expressed in PathHunter Parental cells could be useful for elucidating the functional mechanisms of deglycosylated $rec-eCG{\beta}/{\alpha}$ mutants.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.450-456
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• 2016

Rhizoctonia leaf blight (large patch) has become a serious problem in Korean lawn grass, which is extremely hard to treat and develops mostly from the roots of lawn grass to wither it away. Rhizoctonia leaf blight (large patch) is caused by Rhizoctonia solani AG2-2 (IV). To develop zoysia japonica with strong disease tolerance against this pathogenic bacterium, ${\beta}-1,3-glucanase$ was cloned from zoysia japonica, which is one of the PR-Proteins known to play a critical role in plant defense reaction. ${\beta}-1,3-glucanase$ is known to be generated within the cells when plant tissues have a hypersensitive reaction due to virus or bacterium infection and secreted outside the cells to play mainly the function of resistance against pathogenic bacteria in the space between the cells. This study utilized the commonly preserved part in the sequence of corn, wheat, barley, and rice which had been researched for their disease tolerance among the ${\beta}-1,3-glucanase$ monocotyledonous plants. Based on the part, degenerate PCR was performed to find out the sequence and full-length cDNA was cloned. E.coli over-expression was conducted in this study to mass purify target protein and implement in vitro activation measurement and antibacterial test. In addition, to interpret the functions of ZjGlu1 gene, each gene-incorporating plant transformation vectors were produced to make lawn grass transformant. Based on ZjGlu1 protein, antibacterial activity test was conducted on 9 strains. As a result, R. cerealis, F. culmorum, R.solani AG-1 (1B), and T. atroviride were found to have antibacterial activity. The gene-specific expression amount in each organ showed no huge difference in the organs based upon the transformant and against 18s gene expression amount.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.50 no.7
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• pp.455-465
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• 2017

Understanding of the two-dimensional velocity field is crucial in terms of analyzing various hydrodynamic and fluvial processes in the riverine environments. Until recently, many numerical models have played major roles of providing such velocity field instead of in-situ flow measurements, because there were limitations in instruments and methodologies suitable for efficiently measuring in the broad range of river reaches. In the last decades, however, the advent of modernized instrumentations started to revolutionize the flow measurements. Among others, acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCPs) became very promising especially for accurately assessing streamflow discharge, and they are also able to provide the detailed velocity field very efficiently. Thus it became possible to capture the velocity field only with field observations. Since most of ADCPs measurements have been mostly conducted in the cross-sectional lines despite their capabilities, it is still required to apply appropriate interpolation methods to obtain dense velocity field as likely as results from numerical simulations. However, anisotropic nature of the meandering river channel could have brought in the difficulties for applying simple spatial interpolation methods for handling dynamic flow velocity vector, since the flow direction continuously changes over the curvature of the channel shape. Without considering anisotropic characteristics in terms of the meandering, therefore, conventional interpolation methods such as IDW and Kriging possibly lead to erroneous results, when they dealt with velocity vectors in the meandering channel. Based on the consecutive ADCP cross-sectional measurements in the meandering river channel. For this purpose, the geographic coordinate with the measured ADCP velocity was converted from the conventional Cartesian coordinate (x, y) to a curvilinear coordinate (s, n). The results from application of A-VIM showed significant improvement in accuracy as much as 41.5% in RMSE.

• Korean Journal of Microbiology
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.21-26
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• 2010

As the causative agent of Anthrax, Bacillus anthracis causes an acute fatal disease in herbivores such as cattle, sheep, and horses as well as humans. The therapeutics and prevention of anthrax currently available are based on antibiotics and the live attenuated vaccine strains, which may be problematic due to the emergency of antibiotic resistant strains or residual virulence in those vaccine strains. Therefore, it has been required to develop novel therapeutics and vaccines which are safer and applicable to humans. Recently, the development of the multivalent vaccine targeting both spores and vegetative cells of B. anthracis along with anthrax toxin has been reported. In our attempts to screen potential candidates for those multivalent vaccines, the whole genomic expression library of B. anthracis was constructed in this study. To the end, the partial digests of the genomic DNA from B. anthracis (ATCC 14578) with Sau3AI were ligated with the inducible pET30abc expression vectors, resulting in approximately $1{\times}10^5$ clones in E. coli BL21(DE3). The redundancy test by DNA nucleotide sequencing was performed for the randomly selected 111 clones and found 56 (50.5%) B. anthracis genes, 17 (15.3%) vector sequences, and 38 (34.2%) unknown genes with no sequence homology by BLAST. An inducible expression of the recombinant proteins was confirmed by Western blot. Interestingly, some clones could react with the antiserum against B. anthracis. These results imply that the whole genomic library constructed in this study can be applied for analyzing the immunomes of B. anthracis.

• Korean Journal of Microbiology
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.15-20
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• 2010

Xenotransplantation of pig organs is complicated by the existence of polytropic replication-competent porcine endogenous retroviruses (PERV) capable of infecting human cells. Two classes of infectious human-tropic replication-competent PERVs (PERV-A and PERV-B) and one class of ecotropic PERV-C are known. The potential for recombination between ecotropic PERV-C and human-tropic PERVs adds another level of infectious risk. A recombinant PERV-A/C (PERV-A14/220) virus is 500-fold more infectious than PERV-A. Two determinants of this high infectivity was identified; one was isoleucine-to-valine substitution at position 140 in RBD (receptor binding domain), and the other lies within the PRR (proline rich region) of the envelope protein. To examine whether the effects of the cytoplasmic tail of the PERV-C Env on fusogenesity also influences infectivity, we constructed a pseudotype retroviral vectors containing MoMLV core protein and PERV envelopes. Pseudotyping experiments with the PERV envelope glycoproteins indicated that recombinant PERV-A/C virus is 10-fold more infectious than PERV-A by lacZ staining. This result supports the suggestion that viral transduction of PERV-A/C is enhanced by a membrane-proximal cytoplasmic amphiphilic ${\alpha}$-helix in PERV-C Env tail.

• Korean Journal of Microbiology
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• v.49 no.1
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• pp.64-70
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• 2013

The greenhouse whitefly, Trialeurodes vaporariorum, is an economically important pest for greenhouse crops because they cause direct damage by feeding on plant nutrients and indirect damage as transmits many virus vectors. It has recently become a serious problem because of the continuous use of insecticide resulting in resistance among greenhouse whitefly population. To overcome these problems, in this study, the biological characteristics and virulence of an entomopathogenic fungus isolated from the cadaver of nymph greenhouse whitefly were investigated. Isolated fungus was identified as Isaria fumosorosea by morphological examinations and genetic identification using sequences of the ITS, ${\beta}$-tubulin, and EF1-${\alpha}$ regions. This fungus was named as I. fumosorosea SDTv and tested for the virulence against nymphs T. vaporariorum and the cold activity, the thermotolerance and the stability of UV-B irradiation on conidia. Mortality rate of greenhouse whitefly showed from 84 to 100% and the virulence increased with increasing conidial concentrations, $1{\times}10^5$ to $10^8$ conidia/ml. Conidia were stable at $35^{\circ}C$, 0.1 $J/cm^2$ of UV irradiation and germinated after 8 days at $4^{\circ}C$. Additionally, the activities of chitinases and proteases produced by I. fumosorosea SDTv were varied according to the medium. In conclusion, I. fumosorosea SDTv which showed high mortality rate against greenhouse whitefly will be used effectively in the integrated pest management programs against the greenhouse whitefly.

• Journal of Applied Biological Chemistry
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• v.53 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2010

xylA promoter is a major promoter in xylose operon of Escherichia coli. xylA promoter is sufficient as the promoter for the construction of new expression vector because this promoter was tightly controlled and induced by the addition of xylose. For the construction of xylose-inducible expression vector, 600 bp of xylA promoter was ligated between AatII and HindIII of pUC18, named pXA600. In order to investigate the effect of XylR protein encoded by xylR gene on the xylA promoter, 1,988 bp of xylR gene including its promoter was ligated into downstream of multiple cloning site to the opposite direction of xylA promoter in pXA600, named pXAR600. For the measurement of expression level, 3,048 bp of lacZ structural gene was fused into xylA promoter in both plasmids pXA600 and pXAR600 as a reporter gene, named pXA600-lacZ and pXAR600-lacZ, respectively. The $\beta$-galactosidase activity of pXA600-lacZ and pXAR600-lacZ in E. coli JM109 was determined to be 1,641 and 2,304 unit by the induction with xylose in LB medium, respectively. The $\beta$-galactosidase activity of pXAR600-lacZ/JM109 was about 1.4 times higher by the induction with xylose than that of pXA600-lacZ/JM109. The $\beta$-galactosidase activity of pXA600-lacZ and pXAR600-lacZ in E.coli JM109 showed 6,282 and 9,320 unit by the induction with xylose in DM minimal medium, respectively. A regulator, xylR protein works as an activator for the gene expression by the addition of xylose in the xylose-inducible vectors because the level of gene expression in pXA600 is increased by the insertion of xylR gene into the same vector. The xynA gene of Streptomyces thermocyaneoviolaceus cloned in pXA600 and pXAR600 was successfully expressed in E. coli BLR(DE3). As a result, plasmids pXA600 and pXAR600 using xylA promoter are sufficient as new expression system to produce a foreign protein in E. coli.