• Environmental Analysis Health and Toxicology
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.131-137
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• 2000

The release of hazardous waste materials into the environment poses serious risks in humans and ecosystems. The risk assessment of environmental pollutants including hazardous chemicals requires a comprehensive measurement of hazard and exposure of the chemicals that can be achieved by toxicity evaluation using a biological system such as biomarkers. In this report we have tried to develop a biomarker used to elucidate a molecular basis of, and to monitor abnormal behaviors caused by diazinon in Japanese medaka (Oryzias latipes) as a model organism. First, an attempt was made to clone tyrosine hydroxylase gene from Japanese medaka that would be a candidate for a biomarker for neuronal modulations and behaviors. For monitoring experiments at behavioral and molecular biological levels, the fish were treated under different sublethal conditions of diazinon and their behavioral responses were observed . In this study we have successfully cloned a partial TH gene from the medaka fish through PCR screening of an ovary cDNA library. DNA sequencing analysis revealed that the amplified fragment was 327 bp encoding 109 amino acids. Comparing the DNA sequence of medaka TH with other species, TH gene revealed the DNA sequence was completely identical to that of rat TH. In the RT-PCR, 330 Up of mRNA was consistently amplified in all the treated samples including control There were no significant differences in the TH expression level regardless of treating concentrations (1∼5,000 ppb) and time (0∼48 hr) The reason appeared to be that RT-PCR was not performed using through a quantitative analysis normalized against an actin gene expression. Organ or tissue - specific detection of TH activity and mRNA as biomarkers will be a useful monitoring tool for neurobehavioral changes in fish influenced by toxic chemicals. Furthermore, quantitative analysis of locomotive patterns and its correlation with the neurochemical and molecular data would be highly useful in measuring toxicity and hazard ofvarious environmental pollutants.

• The Journal of the Korean bone and joint tumor society
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.46-53
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• 2005

Purpose: Bisphosphonates (BPs) are the analogues of endogenous pyrophosphates: they have been used in the treatment of skeletal diseases such as Paget's disease, osteoporosis, and tumorinducing ostelysis, and are used in treatment of osteolytic metastasis of breast cancer recently. They are also used as one of the therapeutic agents for metastasis of prostatic cancer of which metastasis makes the mixed nature of osteolysis and ostegenesis. Although the action mechanism of BPs are well known for diseases with excessive osteoclastic bone resorption, the direct effect of BPs has not been known yet. This study was intended to see the tumor suppression capability of Zoledronic acid(ZOL) using nude mouse with osteosarcoma. Materials and Methods: MG-63 and HOS osteosarcoma cell lines were used and the transforemed MG-63-GFP and HOS-GFP cells, which were made for detection under fluorescent light, were subcutaneously injected to make osteosarcoma. The five 6-week male mice were used for the experiment at each group. After the injection, mice were cultivated until tumor pieces grow up to $3{\times}3{\times}3$ $mm^3$ and ZOL of 120 ug/kg was subcutaneously injected twice a week. Sizes of tumor were measured twice a week and photographed under fluorescent light. Results: In in vivo test with HOS osteosarcoma cell lines, mean size of tumors was 2,520 $mm^3$ in control group and was 131 $mm^3$ in ZOL group, which showed 94% of reduction comparing with the control ; with MG-63 osteosarcoma cell lines, mean size of tumors was 2,866 $mm^3$ in control group and was 209 $mm^3$ in test group with 72% of reduction (p<0.05). Conclusion: In in vivo tests with nude mice, we suggest that ZOL has direct effect on osteosarcoma cells and it would be used as one of the therapeutic agents for osteosarcoma, especially to ZOL-sensitive osteosarcoma cells.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.27 no.11
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• pp.1245-1255
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• 2017

Most cancer cells produce ATP predominantly through glycolysis instead of through mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation, even in the presence of oxygen. The phenomenon is termed the Warburg effect, or the glycolytic switch, and it is thought to increase the availability of biosynthetic precursors for cell proliferation. EMTs have critical roles in the initiation of the invasion and metastasis of cancer cells. The glycolytic switch and EMT are important for tumor development and progression; however, their correlation with tumor progression is largely unknown. The Snail transcription factor is a major factor involved in EMT. The Snail expression is regulated by distal-less homeobox 2 (Dlx-2), a homeodomain transcription factor that is involved in embryonic and tumor development. The Dlx-2/Snail cascade is involved in Wnt-induced EMTs and the glycolytic switch. This study showed that in response to Wnt signaling, the Dlx-2/Snail cascade induces the expression of PFKFB2, which is a glycolytic enzyme that synthesizes and degrades fructose 2, 6-bisphosphate (F2,6BP). It also showed that PFKFB2 shRNA prevents Wnt-induced EMTs in the breast-tumor cell line MCF-7. The prevention indicated that glycolysis is linked to Wnt-induced EMT. Additionally, this study showed PFKFB2 shRNA suppresses in vivo tumor metastasis and growth. Finally, it showed the PFKFB2 expression is higher in breast, colon and ovarian cancer tissues than in matched normal tissues regardless of the cancers' stages. The results demonstrated that PFKFB2 is an important regulator of EMTs and metastases induced by the Wnt, Dlx-2 and Snail factors.

• Geotechnical Engineering
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.29-36
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• 1995

Load testis are executed on model reticulated root piles (RRP) to figure out the optimum slanting angle in the piles installation. One set of model RRP consists of 8 slanting piles which are installed in circular patterns forming two concentric circles, each of which is made by 4 piles. Each pile which is a steel bar of 5m in diameter and 300mm in length is coated to become a pile of 6.5mm in diameter. The slanting angle of the model RRP varies from 0$^{\circ}$ to 20$^{\circ}$ Comparing ultimate bearing capacities of the model RRP of different installation angles, it is observed that the ultimate capacities of the RRP increase as the installation angle increases until 15$^{\circ}$, and the optimum slanting angle of the RRP is around 15$^{\circ}$ The ultimate bearing capacity of the 15$^{\circ}$-RRP is found to be 22% bigger than that of the vertical RRP and 120% bigger than that of the circular surface footing whose diameter is same with the circle formed by outer root piles'heads. However, it is noticed that when the slanting angle of the RRP is increased over 15$^{\circ}$, the ultimate capacity starts to be reduced. The ultimate capacity of 20$^{\circ}$-RRP is even smaller than that of the vertical RRP by as much as 5%. From the observation of the load settlement curve obtained during the RRP load tests, it is known that as the slanting angle gets bigger the load -settlement behavior becomes more ductile.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.24 no.11
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• pp.1168-1173
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• 2014

The homogentisate 1,2-dioxygenase (HGD) gene, which consists of 14 exons and spans approximately 42630bp on Bos taurus autosome 1 (BTA 1), is one of the six enzymes required for catabolism of the aromatic amino acids tyrosine and phenylalanine. It has been reported that BTA1 harbors quantitative trait loci that effect marbling score (MS), carcass weight (CW), and longissimus muscle area (LMA) in cattle. The aim of this study was to identify the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the HGD gene and to analyze their association with economic traits in Korean cattle (Hanwoo). Genetic polymorphisms were screened by direct sequencing, which detected 10 SNPs (T11187C, T11301A, T11398G, G29833A, G34256T, G34257C, T34284C, T42333G, T42348C, and T42468C). Six polymorphic sites were selected for genotyping, and economic traits were analyzed using a general linear model in Korean cattle (n=90). The observed genotype frequencies for G34256T were 0.5843(GG), 0.3708(GT), and 0.0449(TT). In addition, 0.3596(GG), 0.3708(GC), and 0.2697(CC) were observed for the G34257C mutation. Statistical association analysis revealed that G34256T polymorphisms were significantly associated with MS, and G34257C polymorphisms were significantly associated with MS and LMA (p<0.05). Further study is needed in order to use the genetic variant as a marker for marker-assisted selection in Korean cattle.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.18 no.11
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• pp.1507-1512
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• 2008

In spite of long research period for Salmonella typhi, little information is known about the pathogenesis mechanism of human typhoid fever caused by S. typhi due to lack of infection model in animals. A wild-type of S. typhi Ty2 strain requires cysteine to grow on minimal media. We hypothesized that this cysteine requirement may restrict colonization of S. typhi in animals during infection process. Among the S. typhi strains carrying Salmonella typhimurium genomic library, we have isolated three S. typhi transformants growing on minimal media without cysteine. Although there were three ORFs in DNA of pBP71, the STM1490 ORF complemented cysteine auxotrophy of S. typhi. Analysis of the deduced amino acid sequence of the STM1490 homolog in S. typhi revealed that there are differences in two amino acids. Plasmids containing amino acid substitutions in STM1490 supported S. typhi growth on minimal media without cysteine, indicating irrelevance of these two amino acids to STM1490 function. These results tells us that there are other factors or systems involved in cysteine requirement of S. typhi.

• YAKHAK HOEJI
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.191-197
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• 2012

We previously reported that the novel isoflavone-free peptide mixture (black soybean peptide, BSP) had several beneficial effects like antiobesity and hypotriglyceridemic effect. However, there are no reports for BSP on anti-hypertensive activity. BSP induced heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) in HUVECs, thus investigated the HO-1-induced activity in HUVECs and the anti-hypertensive effects in SHR animal model. BSP significantly induced HO-1 expression both at transcriptional and protein levels in a time- and dose-dependent manner as measured by RT-PCR and Western blot analysis, respectively. These inductions were abolished by pretreatment of N-acetyl-cystein (NAC, 1~10 mM), but not by employing Tempol, a superoxide dismutase (SOD) mimetic (1~5 mM). As expected, enzymatic activity (~2 fold) determined by bilirubin formation assay and cGMP concentration (~6 fold) were significantly increased in BSP-treated cells. Based on the numerous evidences on the beneficial effects of HO-1 and our results, we investigated in vivo effects of BSP on the antihypertensive activity. The administration of BSP (1% in drinking water) significantly decreased mean blood pressure (BP) (from $218.6{\pm}6.99$ to $190.0{\pm}3.42$ mm Hg, p<0.01). This result indicates that BSP is strong inducer of HO-1 expression, which may be triggered by oxidative stress, and has anti-hypertensive activity.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.28-36
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• 2022

As port structures are exposed to various extreme external loads such as wind (typhoons), sea waves, or collision with ships; it is important to evaluate the structural safety periodically. To monitor the port structure, especially the rubber fender, a fender segmentation system using a vision sensor and deep learning method has been proposed in this study. For fender segmentation, a new deep learning network that improves the encoder-decoder framework with the receptive field block convolution module inspired by the eccentric function of the human visual system into the DenseNet format has been proposed. In order to train the network, various fender images such as BP, V, cell, cylindrical, and tire-types have been collected, and the images are augmented by applying four augmentation methods such as elastic distortion, horizontal flip, color jitter, and affine transforms. The proposed algorithm has been trained and verified with the collected various types of fender images, and the performance results showed that the system precisely segmented in real time with high IoU rate (84%) and F1 score (90%) in comparison with the conventional segmentation model, VGG16 with U-net. The trained network has been applied to the real images taken at one port in Republic of Korea, and found that the fenders are segmented with high accuracy even with a small dataset.

• The Korea Journal of Herbology
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.15-23
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• 2019

Objective : Reflux esophagitis (RE) is a disease that caused gastric acid reflux and inflammation due to unstable gastroesophageal sphincter, as increasing worldwide respectively. This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of Evodiae Fructus (EF) extract on chronic reflux esophagitis in rats. Methods : The EF was measured antioxidant activity, such as total polyphenol and total flavonoid contents, 1, 1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and 2, 2'-azinobis-3-ethyl-enzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid (ABTS) radical scavenging activity. Rats were divided into 3 groups; Nor (normal group), Con (chronic acid reflux esophagitis rats treatment with water), EF (chronic acid reflux esophagitis rat treatment with EF 200 mg/kg body weight group). A surgically-induced chronic acid reflux esophagitis (CARE) model was established in SD rats, and treated with water or EF 200 mg/kg body weight for 14 consecutive days. Results : Administration of EF to rats of induction of chronic acid reflux esophagitis was found to reduce esophagus tissues injury. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) and produces peroxynitrite ($ONOO^-$) levels of esophagus tissues were significantly decreased in EF compared to Con group. As results of esophagus protein analyses, EF effectively reduce inflammatory-related factors ($NF-{\kappa}Bp65$, $p-I{\kappa}B{\alpha}$, iNOS, $TNF-{\alpha}$, IL-6), and increase anti-oxidant enzyme (Nrf2, HO-1, SOD, catalase, GPx-1/2). Conclusions : These results suggest that EF administration comfirmed that decreased esophagus tissues injury, oxidantive stress, anti-inflammation effect, and increased anti-oxidant effect. Therefore, EF was the potential to be used as a natural therapeutic drug.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.53 no.5
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• pp.529-542
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• 2020

The cesium (Cs) sorption characteristics of a bead-type polysulfone carrier contained HNO₃-treated bamboo charcoal (3 - 5 mm in diameter) in water system were investigated and its Cs removal efficiency as an adsorbent from water was also identified by various laboratory experiments. From the results of batch sorption experiments, the bead-type polysulfone carrier with only 5% HNO₃-treated bamboo charcoal (P-5NBC) represented the high Cs removal efficiency of 57.8% for 1 hour sorption time. The Cs removal efficiency of P-5NBC in water after 24 hours reaction maintained > 69% at a wide range of pH and temperature conditions, attesting to its applicability under various water systems. Batch sorption experiments were repeated for P-5NBC coated with two cultivated microorganisms (Pseudomonas fluorescens and Bacillus drentensis), which were typical indigenous species inhabited in soil and groundwater. The Cs removal efficiency for two microorganisms coated polysulfone carrier (BP-5NBC) additionally increased by 19% and 18%, respectively, compared to that of only P-5NBC without microorganisms coated. The average Cs desorption rate of P-5NBC for 24 h was lower than 16%, showing the Cs was stably attached on HNO₃-treated bamboo charcoal in so much as its long-term use. The maximum Cs sorption capacity (q_m) of P-5NBC calculated from the Langmuir isotherm model study was 60.9 mg/g, which was much higher than those of other adsorbents from previous studies for 1 h sorption time. The results of continuous column experiments showed that the P-5NBC coated with microorganisms packed in the column maintained > 80% of the Cs removal efficiency during 100 pore volumes flushing. It suggested that only 14.7 g of P-5NBC (only 0.75 g of HNO₃ treated bamboo charcoal included) can successfully clean-up 7.2 L of Cs contaminated water (the initial Cs concentration: 1 mg/L; the effluent concentration: < 0.2 mg/L). The present results suggested that the Cs contaminated water can be successfully cleaned up by using a small amount of the polysulfone carrier with HNO₃-treated bamboo charcoal.