• Applied Biological Chemistry
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• v.50 no.4
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• pp.268-275
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• 2007

Diversity of the mud flat microbial population in Suncheon Bay was investigated by studying extracellular enzyme activities and 16S rDNA sequences. Four culturable bacterial strains with CMCase, xylanase and protease activities were isolated from the wetland and the mud flat. All the strains produced more xylanase activity than CMCase or protease activity, and the properties of the isolate enzymes from the wetland were similar to those from the mud flat. About 2,000 clones were obtained with the 16S rDNA amplified from the metagenomic DNA isolated from the mud samples. Based on the restriction pattern(s), seventeen clones were selected for base sequence analysis. Of the 17 clones, only 35% (6 clones) were found to be cultured strains and 65% (11 clones) to be uncultured strains. The similarities in the base sequences of the clones ranged from 91.0% to 99.9% with an average similarity of 97.3%. The clones could be divided into 7 groups, Proteobacteria (9 clones, 52.9%), Firmicutes (3 clones, 17.6%), Bacteroidetes (1 clone), Flavobacteria (1 clone), Verrucomicrobia (1 clone), Acidobacteria (1 clone), and Chloroflexi (1 clone). Most of the Proteobacteria clones were gamma Proteobacteria associated with oxidation-reduction of sulfur.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.102-112
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• 2008

We developed a high-resolution micro-CT system based on rotational gantry and flat-panel detector for live mouse imaging. This system is composed primarily of an x-ray source with micro-focal spot size, a CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) flat panel detector coupled with Csl (TI) (thallium-doped cesium iodide) scintillator, a linearly moving couch, a rotational gantry coupled with positioning encoder, and a parallel processing system for image data. This system was designed to be of the gantry-rotation type which has several advantages in obtaining CT images of live mice, namely, the relative ease of minimizing the motion artifact of the mice and the capability of administering respiratory anesthesia during scanning. We evaluated the spatial resolution, image contrast, and uniformity of the CT system using CT phantoms. As the results, the spatial resolution of the system was approximately the 11.3 cycles/mm at 10% of the MTF curve, and the radiation dose to the mice was 81.5 mGy. The minimal resolving contrast was found to be less than 46 CT numbers on low-contrast phantom imaging test. We found that the image non-uniformity was approximately 70 CT numbers at a voxel size of ${\sim}55{\times}55{\times}X100\;{\mu}^3$. We present the image test results of the skull and lung, and body of the live mice.