• Korean Journal of Microbiology
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• v.52 no.3
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• pp.365-374
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• 2016

In high-latitude regions, temperature has risen ($0.6^{\circ}C$ per decade) and this leads to the increase in microbial degradability against soil organic carbon (SOC). Furthermore, the decomposed SOC is converted into green-house gases ($CO_2$ and $CH_4$) and their release could further increase the rate of climate change. Thus, understanding the microbial diversity and their functions linked with SOC degradation in soil-thawing model is necessary. In this study, we divided tundra soil from Council, Alaska into two depth regions (30-40 cm and 50-60 cm of depth, designated as SPF and PF, respectively) and incubated that for 108 days at $0^{\circ}C$. A total of 111,804 reads were obtained through a pyrosequencing-based metagenomic study during the microcosm experiments, and 574-1,128 of bacterial operational taxonomic units (OTUs) and 30-57 of archaeal OTUs were observed. Taxonomic analysis showed that the distribution of bacterial taxa was significantly different between two samples. In detail, the relative abundance of phyla Actinobacteria and Firmicutes largely increased in SPF and PF soil, respectively, while phyla Crenarchaeota was increased in both soil samples. Weight measurement and gel permeation chromatography of the SOC extracts demonstrated that polymerization of humic acids, main component of SOC, occurred during the microcosm experiments. Taken together our results indicate that these bacterial and archaeal phyla could play a key function in SOC degradation and utilization in cold tundra soil.

• Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.117-123
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• 2010

Ibudilast, 3-isobutyryl-2-isopropyrazolo[1,5-a]pyridine, is a nonselective inhibitor of cyclic nucleotide phosphodiesterase (PDE). It preferentially inhibits PDE 3A, PDE4, PDE10 and PDE11 as well as a number of the other PDE families, albeit to a lesser extent. Ibudilast is used clinically to treat bronchial asthma and cerebrovascular disorders. Thes e clinical uses are based on the ability of ibudilast to inhibit platelet aggregation, improve cerebral blood flow and attenuate allergic reactions. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the bioequivalence of two ibudilast capsules, Ketas capsule (Handok Pharmaceuticals Co., Ltd.) and Pinatos capsule (Sam Chun Dang Pharm. Co., Ltd.), according to the guidelines of the Korea Food and Drug Administration (KFDA). The in vitro release of ibudilast from the two ibudilast formulations was tested using KP Apparatus method with various dissolution media. Twenty six healthy male subjects, 23.31${\pm}$1.09 years in age and 70.45${\pm}$8.51 kg in body weight, were divided into two groups and a randomized $2{\times}2$ cross-over study was employed. After a single capsule containing 10 mg as ibudilast was orally administered, blood samples were taken at predetermined time intervals and the concentrations of ibudilast in serum were determined using HPLC/UV detector. The dissolution profiles of two formulations were similar in all tested dissolution media. The pharmacokinetic parameters such as $AUC_t$, $C_{max}$ and $T_{max}$ were calculated, and computer programs (Equiv Test and K-BE Test 2002) were utilized for the statistical analysis of the parameters using logarithmically transformed $AUC_t$, $C_{max}$ and untransformed $T_{max}$. The results showed that the differences between two formulations based on the reference drug, Ketas, were 6.99%, -2.48% and 9.93% for $AUC_t$, $C_{max}$ and $T_{max}$, respectively. There were no sequence effects between two formulations in these parameters. The 90% confidence intervals using logarithmically transformed data were within the acceptance range of log 0.8 to log 1.25 (e.g., log 0.8791~log 1.1861 and log 0.8347~log 1.1199 for $AUC_t$ and $C_{max}$, respectively). Thus, the criteria of the KFDA bioequivalence guideline were satisfied, indicating Pinatos capsule was bioequivalent to Ketas capsule.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.636-643
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• 2004

D-Xylose isomerase produced by Lactococcus sp. JK-8, isolated from kimchi, was purified 17-fold of homogeneity, and its physicochemical properties were determined. Although the N-terminal amino acid sequence of D-xylose isomerase was analysed to Ala-Tyr-Phe-Asn-Asp-Ile-Ala-Pro-Ile-Lys, it was not similar to that of Lactobacillus enzyme. The molecular weight of the purified enzyme was estimated to be 180 kDa by gel filtration, 45 kDa by SDS-PAGE and the enzyme was homotetramer. The optimum pH of the enzyme was around 7 and stable between pH 6 and 8. The optimum reaction temperature was 7$0^{\circ}C$ and stable up to 7$0^{\circ}C$ in the presence of 1 mM $Mn^{2+}$. Like other D-xylose isomerases, this enzyme required divalent cation, such as $Mg^{2+}$, $Co^{2+}$, or $Mn^{2+}$ for the activity and thermostability. $Mn^{2+}$was the best activator. Substrate specificity studies showed that this enzyme was highly active on D-xylose. The enzyme had an isoelectric point of 4.8, and fm values for D-xylose was 5.9 mM.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.49-56
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• 1999

In many continuous speech recognition systems based on HMMs, decision tree-based state tying has been used for not only improving the robustness and accuracy of context dependent acoustic modeling but also synthesizing unseen models. To construct the phonetic decision tree, standard method performs one-level pruning using just single Gaussian triphone models. In this paper, two novel approaches, two-level decision tree and multi-mixture decision tree, are proposed to get better performance through more accurate acoustic modeling. Two-level decision tree performs two level pruning for the state tying and the mixture weight tying. Using the second level, the tied states can have different mixture weights based on the similarities in their phonetic contexts. In the second approach, phonetic decision tree continues to be updated with training sequence, mixture splitting and re-estimation. Multi-mixture Gaussian as well as single Gaussian models are used to construct the multi-mixture decision tree. Continuous speech recognition experiment using these approaches on BN-96 and WSJ5k data showed a reduction in word error rate comparing to the standard decision tree based system given similar number of tied states.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.180-188
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• 2015

The bacterial strain isolated from Kimchi showed antibacterial activity against Micrococcus luteus IAM 1056. The selected strain was identified as Lactococcus lactis by 16S rRNA nucleotide sequence analysis and named as Lactococcus sp. KD 28. The treatment of culture supernatant with proteinase K removed antibacterial activity, indicating its proteinaceous nature, a bacteriocin. This bacteriocin was sensitive to hydrolytic enzymes such as ${\alpha}$-chymotrypsion, trypsin, proteinase K, lipase, ${\alpha}$-amylase and subtilisin A. The bacteriocin was highly thermostable and resistant to heating at $80^{\circ}C$ for up to an hour but 50 % of the total activity was remained at $100^{\circ}C$ for 30 min. The pH range from 2.0 to 8.0 had no effect on bacteriocin activity and it was not affected by solvents such as acetonitrile, isopropanol, methanol, chloroform and acetone up to 50% concentration. The bacteriocin showed antibacterial activity against M. luteus IAM 1056, Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. lactis KCTC 1058, Enterococcus faecium KCTC 3095, Bacillus cereus KCTC 1013, B. subtilis KCTC 1023, Listeria ivanovii subsp. ivanovii KCTC 3444, Staphylococcus aureus subsp. aureus KCTC 1916, B. megaterium KCTC 1098 and B. sphaericus KCTC 1184. The bacteriocin was purified through ammonium sulfate concentration, SP-Sepharose chromatography and RP-HPLC. The molecular weight was estimated to be about 3.4 kDa by tricine-SDS-PAGE analysis.

• Korean Journal of Microbiology
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.81-86
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• 2005

One of the endoglucanases, F-I-III, was purified from the culture filtrate of T. sp. C-4 through procedures including chromatography on Sephacryl S-200, DEAE-Sepharose A-50, and Chromatofocusing on Mono-P (FPLC). The molecular weight of the enzyme was determined to be about 56,000 Da by SDS-PAGE, and pI of 4.9 by analytical isoelectric focusing. F-I-III showed the highest enzyme activity at $55^{\circ}C$, and the pH optimum of the enzyme was 5.0. There was no loss of activity when the enzyme was incubated at $50^{\circ}C$ for 24 hours. The specific activity of the enzyme F-I-III toward the CMC was 315.4 U/mg. The Km value for $PNPG_2$ of F-I-III was 2.69 mM. N-terminal sequence of F-I-III was analyzed to be QPGTSTPEVHPKKLTTYK. It showed $95\%$ of homology to that of EGI from T. reesei. The presence of some metal ions (1 mM) had only a little effect on CMCase activity. The treatment of the reducing agents resulted in the increase of endoglucanase activity.

• Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.215-222
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• 2004

The purpose of the present study was designed to evaluate the bioequivalence of two oxiracetam tablets, Neuromed tablet (Korea Drug Co., reference drug) and Neuracetam tablet (Sam Jin Pharmaceutical Co., test drug), according to the guidelines of Korea Food and Drug Administration (KFDA). Release of oxiracetam from the tablet in vitro was tested using KP VIII Apparatus II method with various dissolution media (pH 1.2, 4.0, 6.8 buffer solution and water). Twenty-four healthy volunteers, $23.7\;{\pm}\;2.4$ year in age and $68.9\;{\pm}\;6.2$ kg in body weight, were divided into two groups and a randomized $2{\times}2$ cross-over study was performed. After oral administration of a tablet containing 800 mg of oxiracetam, blood samples were taken at predetermined time intervals and concentrations of oxiracetam in plasma were determined using HPLC-MS-MS. The dissolution profiles of two formulations were very similar at all dissolution media. In addition, pharmacokinetic parameters such as $AUC_t$, $C_{max}$ and $T_{max}$ were calculated and ANOVA test was utilized for the statistical analysis of the parameters using logarithmically transformed $AUC_t$ and $C_{max}$ untransformed $T_{max}$. The results showed that the differences between two formulations based on the reference drug were 0.42%, 0.45% and -12.58% for $AUC_t$, $C_{max}$ and $T_{max}$, respectively. There were no sequence effects between two formulations in these parameters. The 90% confidence intervals for the log transformed data were within the acceptance range of log 0.8 to log 1.25 (e.g., $log0.94{\sim}log1.06$ and $log0.90{\sim}log1.07$ for $AUC_t$, and $C_{max}$, respectively), indicating that Neuracetam tablet is bioequivalent to Neuromed tablet. The major pharmacokinetic parameters, $AUC_t$, and $C_{max}$ met the criteria set by KFDA for bioequivalence indicating that Neuracetam tablet is bioequivalent to Neuromed tablet.

• Journal of Pharmaceutical Investigation
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• v.38 no.6
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• pp.413-419
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• 2008

Carvedilol, is a nonselective $\beta$-blocking agent and it also has vasodilating properties that are attributed mainly to its blocking activity at ${\alpha}_1$-receptors. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the bioequivalence of two carvedilol tablets, $Dilatrend^{(R)}$ tablet 12.5 mg (Chong Kun Dang Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.) and Cadilan tablet 12.5 mg (KyungDong Pharmaceutical. Co., Ltd.), according to the guidelines of the Korea Food and Drug Administration (KFDA). The release of carvedilol from the two carvedilol formulations in vitro was tested using KP VIII Apparatus II method with pH 4.5 dissolution medium. Thirty two healthy male subjects, $25.00{\pm}3.09$ years in age and $70.71{\pm}11.35\;kg$ in body weight, were divided into two groups and a randomized $2{\times}2$ cross-over study was employed. After a single tablet containing 12.5 mg as carvedilol was orally administered, blood samples were taken at predetermined time intervals and the concentrations of carvedilol in serum were determined using HPLC with fluorescence detector. The dissolution profiles of two formulations were similar in the tested dissolution medium. The pharmacokinetic parameters such as $AUC_t$, $C_{max}$ and $T_{max}$ were calculated and ANOVA test was utilized for the statistical analysis of the parameters using logarithmically transformed $AUC_t$, $C_{max}$ and untransformed $T_{max}$. The results showed that the differences between two formulations based on the reference drug, $Dilatrend^{(R)}$ tablet 12.5 mg, were 4.66%, 8.33% and -7.45% for $AUC_t$, $C_{max}$ and $T_{max}$, respectively. There were no sequence effects between two formulations in these parameters. The 90% confidence intervals using logarithmically transformed data were within the acceptance range of log 0.8 to log 1.25 (e.g., $\log\;0.9823{\sim}\log\;1.1042$ and $\log\;1.0132{\sim}\log\;1.1875$ for $AUC_t$ and $C_{max}$, respectively). Thus, the criteria of the KFDA bioequivalence guideline were satisfied, indicating Cadilan tablet 12.5 mg was bioequivalent to $Dilatrend^{(R)}$ tablet 12.5 mg.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.30 no.11
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• pp.1720-1728
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• 2020

We have previously characterized AprESJ4, the major fibrinolytic enzyme from Bacillus subtilis SJ4 (Yao et al., 2019). During that study, we observed a 68 kDa protein with fibrinolytic activity. In this study, we cloned the gene (vprSJ4) encoding the 68 kDa protein, a mature Vpr and minor protease secreted by Bacillus species. vprSJ4 encodes a preproenzyme consisting of 810 amino acids (aa) including signal sequence (28 aa) and prosequence (132 aa). The mature enzyme (650 aa) has a predicted molecular weight of 68,467.35. Unlike Vprs from other B. subtilis strains, VprSJ4 has 4 additional amino acids (DEFA) at the C-terminus. vprSJ4 was overexpressed in Escherichia coli. PreproVprSJ4 was localized in inclusion bodies, and subjected to in vitro renaturation and purification by an affinity column. SDS-PAGE and western blot showed that autoprocessing of preproVprSJ4 occurred and 68 kDa and smaller proteins were produced. The optimum pH and temperature of the recombinant VprSJ4 were pH 7.0 and 40℃, respectively. Kinetic parameters of recombinant VprSJ4 were measured by using an artificial substrate, N-succinyl-ala-ala-pro-phe-p-nitroanilide. Coexpression of vprSJ4 and aprESJ4 using pHY300PLK increased the fibrinolytic activity a further 117% when compared with aprESJ4 single expression using the same vector in B. subtilis WB600.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.38-44
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• 2008

Rebamipide, ($\pm$)-2-(4-chlorobenzoylamino)-3-[2(1H)-quinolinon-4-yl] propionic acid, is used for mucosal protection, healing of gastroduodenal ulcers, and treatment of gastritis. It works by enhancing mucosal defense, scavenging free radicals and temporarily activating genes encoding cyclooxygenase-2. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the bioequivalence of two rebamipide tablets, $Mucosta^{(R)}$ (Korea Otsuca Pharmaceuticals Co., Ltd.) and Mustar (Korean Drug Co., Ltd.), according to the guidelines of the Korea Food and Drug Administration (KFDA). The release of rebamipide from the two rebamipide formulations in vitro was tested using KP VIII Apparatus II method with pH 6.8 dissolution medium. Twenty six healthy male subjects, $23.46{\pm}2.63$ years in age and $66.62{\pm}8.97\;kg$ in body weight, were divided into two groups and a randomized $2{\times}2$ cross-over study was employed. After a single tablet containing 100 mg as rebamipide was orally administered, blood samples were taken at predetermined time intervals and the concentrations of rebamipide in serum were determined using HPLC with fluorescence detector. The dissolution profiles of two formulations were similar in the tested dissolution medium. The pharmacokinetic parameters such as $AUC_t$, $C_{max}$ and $T_{max}$ were calculated, and ANOVA test was utilized for the statistical analysis of the parameters using logarithmically transformed $AUC_t$, $C_{max}$ and untransformed $T_{max}$. The results showed that the differences between two formulations based on the reference drug, $Mucosta^{(R)}$ were -5.08, 3.52 and -9.71 % for $AUC_t$, $C_{max}$ and $T_{max}$, respectively. There were no sequence effects between two formulations in these parameters. The 90% confidence intervals using logarithmically transformed data were within the acceptance range of log 0.8 to log 1.25 (e.g., log 0.84$\sim$log 1.07 and log 0.90$\sim$log 1.17 for $AUC_t$ and $C_{max}$, respectively). Thus, the criteria of the KFDA bioequivalence guideline were satisfied, indicating Mustar tablet was bioequivalent to $Mucosta^{(R)}$ tablet.