• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.477-486
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• 2012

High-resolution bathymetry and physico-chemical properties of manganese nodules were explored to identify the relationship between morphological features and nodule occurrences in the KR1, one of the Korean contract nodule fields located in the NE Pacific. The high-resolution seabed mapping showed that the southwestern sector of the KR1 (KR1-1) was relatively deeper than the northeastern sector (KR1-2) which is occupied by small-scale seamounts. In terms of nodule occurrence, manganese nodules in the KR1-1 were comparatively larger (2-4 cm) with rough surface (t-type) and discoidal shapes (D-type), while those in the KR1-2 were generally small (<2 cm) with smooth surface (s-type) and irregular shapes (I-type). In addition, the nodules in the KR1-1 had higher contents of Cu, Mn and Ni. Such connections of water depths to nodule appearances and metal contents are commonly observed in the Pacific nodule fields. On the other hand, the nodules in the KR1-2 tend to be controled by morphological features. The seamounts in the KR1-2 might continuously provide rock fragments as new nuclei of manganese nodules. As a result, the nodules could not grow over than 2 cm and showed the shapes of a newbie (i.e., smooth surface and irregular shapes). As a result, our observations indicate that occurrence features of manganese nodules could be subjected to water depths and seabed morphology simultaneously.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.382-388
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• 2018

In this study, the SELEX method was used to screen for and select aptamers with high selectivity and affinity for Streptococcus mutans, which is the causative agent of dental caries. Aptamers are single stranded oligonucleotides of DNA or RNA with high selectivity and affinity for target molecules because of their specific three-dimensional structures that are used to collect biometric information. When compared to antibodies in vitro, aptamers are more advantageous because of their ease of use in the screening process, low cost, chemical stability, and lack of restrictions on the target molecules. We sorted DNA aptamers, which contain 44 bp or 38 bp primer sequences in 5' and 3', 39 bp random sequences in the middle.We then analyzed the character and affinity to S. mutans. Aptamers of specific oligonucleotides that combine with S. mutans were selected and these results are selectively fused to S. mutans. The results confirmed that DNA aptamers can be used for rapid diagnosis and treatment of dental caries caused by bacteria of the oral cavity, namely S. mutans.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.58-66
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• 2007

Isolation, expression, and characterization of a novel $endo-{\beta}-1,3(4)-D-glucanase$ with high specific activity and homology to Bacillus lichenases is described. One clone was screened from a genomic library of Paenibacillus sp. F-40, using lichenan-containing plates. The nucleotide sequence of the clone contains an ORF consisting of 717 nucleotides, encoding a ${\beta}-glucanase$ protein of 238 amino acids and 26 residues of a putative signal peptide at its N-terminus. The amino acid sequence showed the highest similarity of 87% to other ${\beta}-1,3-1,4-glucanases$ of Bacillus. The gene fragment Bg1 containing the mature glucanase protein was expressed in Pichia pastoris at high expression level in a 3-1 high-cell-density fermenter. The purified recombinant enzyme Bg1 showed activity against barley ${\beta}-glucan$, lichenan, and laminarin. The gene encodes an $endo-{\beta}-1,3(4)-D-glucanase$ (E. C. 3.2.1.6). When lichenan was used as substrate, the optimal pH was 6.5, and the optimal temperature was $60^{\circ}C$. The $K_m,\;V_{max},\;and\;k_{cat}$ values for lichenan are 2.96mg/ml, $6,951{\mu}mol/min{\cdot}mg,\;and\;3,131s^{-1}$, respectively. For barley ${\beta}-glucan$ the values are 3.73mg/ml, $8,939{\mu}mol/min{\cdot}mg,\;and\;4,026s^{-1}$, respectively. The recombinant Bg1 had resistance to pepsin and trypsin. Other features of recombinant Bg1 including temperature and pH stability, and sensitivity to some metal ions and chemical reagents were also characterized.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.44 no.4
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• pp.504-511
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• 2016

Lactulose, a synthetic disaccharide, has received increasing interest because of its role as a prebiotic that can increase the proliferation of Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus spp. and enhance the absorption of calcium and magnesium. While the industrial production of lactulose is still mainly achieved by the chemical isomerization of lactose in alkaline media, this process has drawbacks including the need to remove catalysts and by-products, as well as high energy requirements. Recently, the use of cellobiose 2-epimerase (CE) has been considered an interesting alternative for industrial lactulose production. In this study, to develop a process for enzymatic lactulose production using CE, we screened improved mutant enzymes ($CS-H^RC^E$) from a library generated by an error-prone PCR technique. The thermostability of one mutant was enhanced, conferring stability up to $75^{\circ}C$, and its lactulose conversion yield was increased by 1.3-fold compared with that of wild-type CE. Using a recombinant Escherichia coli strain harboring a CS35 $H^RC^E$-expressing plasmid, we prepared cell beads immobilized on a Ca-alginate substrate and optimized their reaction conditions. In a batch reaction with 200 g/l lactose solution and the immobilized cell beads, lactose was converted into lactulose with a conversion yield of 43% in 2 h. In a repeated 38-plex batch reaction, the immobilized cell beads were relatively stable, and 80% of the original enzyme activity was retained after 4 cycles. In conclusion, we developed a reasonable method for lactulose production by immobilizing cells expressing thermostable CE. Further development is required to apply this approach at an industrial scale.

• Analytical Science and Technology
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.78-87
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• 2018

Asian lacquer has been used as an adhesive and coating material in Asian countries, such as China, Japan, and Korea, and other southeast Asian countries. In this study, the changes in the chemical structure of lacquer with drying was analyzed using pyrolysis/GC/MS (which is useful in analyzing polymeric material) to understand its drying procedures. Upon increasing temperature, the dried lacquer was fully pyrolyzed above the pyrolysis temperature of $500^{\circ}C$. The repeatability was good at the pyrolysis temperature of $500^{\circ}C$ (rsd = 2.6-22.3 %); however, there were differences in the pyrogram patterns when the difference in sample quantity was large. The characteristic peaks of Asian lacquer components, such as those corresponding to 1,2-benzenediol and 3-methyl-1,2-benzenediol, were detected and the compound of each peak was assigned according to the mass library. As the lacquer dried, the composition of pyrolysis products with urushiol derivatives bearing 3 C=C bonds was severely reduced compared with the ones with no C=C bonds, indicating that the polymerization is related to C=C bonds. These results can be applied to confirm the presence of lacquer in excavated relics and to monitor the changes in the composition of raw lacquer with drying.

• Korean Journal of Medicinal Crop Science
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.86-93
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• 2008

The chemical composition of the volatile constituents from the leaves and stems of endemic Acanthopanax koreanum and A. chiisanensis collected from Mt. Deokyu was determined by GC and GC/MS spectrometric analysis with the aid of NBS, Wiley Library and RI indice searches. The major constituents identified were ${\delta}-3-carene$ (31.34%), l-limonene (17.01 %), ${\beta}-elemene$(4.53%), trans-p-menth-2-ene-1,8-diol(3.13%), 1,8-cineole (4.73%), 1-dodecen-3-yne (2.64%) and (Z)-3,7-dimethyl-1,3,6-octatriene (3.21%) in A. koreanum, and ${\delta}-3-carene$ (14.78%), limonene (7.24%), t-ocimene (7.22%), ${\alpha}-terpinolene$ (8.76%), ${\gamma}-elemene$ (4.32%), ${\beta}-selinene$ (7.72%), veridifloral (3.25%) and dodecane (2.44%) in A. chiisanensis.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.138-147
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• 2007

Metabolic pathway is a series of chemical reactions occuning within a cell and can be used for drug development and understanding of life phenomenon. Many biologists are trying to extract metabolic pathway information from huge literatures for their metabolic-circuit regulation study. We propose a text-mining technique based on the keyword and pattern. Proposed technique utilizes a web robot to collect huge papers and stores them into a local database. We use gene ontology to increase compound recognition rate and NCBI Tokenizer library to recognize useful information without compound destruction. Furthermore, we obtain useful sentence patterns representing metabolic pathway from papers and KEGG database. We have extracted 66 patterns in 20,000 documents for Glycosphingolipid species from KEGG, a representative metabolic database. We verify our system for nineteen compounds in Glycosphingolipid species. The result shows that the recall is 95.1%, the precision 96.3%, and the processing time 15 seconds. Proposed text mining system is expected to be used for metabolic pathway reconstruction.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural Science
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.641-649
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• 2011

This study was to analyze the soil environmental characteristics and vegetation status of green roof in Daejeon Metropolitan City. The investigated floras of vascular plants are 17 families, 26 genera, 28 species in Seo-Gu Daejeon District Office Building (SG), 25 families, 49 genera, 56 species in Galma Public Library (GP), and 34 families, 57 genera, 60 species in Daejeon City Hall (DC) respectively. Although the larger area shows the more numbers of species in introduced plants and naturalized plant, the naturalized plant ratios were similar with each other. They were 10.71%, 10.71%, and 11.67% at SG, GP, and DC respectively. As a result of analysis on soil physical property, soil depths including vegetation soil and drainage soil of 3 green roofs were 30cm. The depths of vegetation soil at SG, GP, and DC were 0~8cm, 0~10cm, 0~10cm respectively. As a results of soil chemical properties of our study, soil pH of vegetation soil and drainage soil were a range of 6.42 and 7.43, and a range of 6.55 and 7.43 on the average respectively. Available-P contents of vegetation soil and drainage soil were a range of 153.33 and 366.33mg/kg, and a range of 136.67 and 242.67 mg/kg which is very high, respectively. Carbon contents in soil at vegetation soil and drainage soil were a range of 3.16 and 6.38%, and a range of 1.63 and 2.47% respectively. Carbon storage per square meter within 30 cm were 2.76 kg, 2.99 kg, and 3.66 kg at SG, GP, and DC respectively.

• Food Science and Preservation
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• v.23 no.7
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• pp.1004-1011
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• 2016

Flavonoids, non-nutrient secondary metabolites of plants, are widely distributed in commonly consumed agro-food resources. Flavonoids include aglycones, and their glycosides are reported to have potential health-promoting compounds. The aim of this study was to investigate flavonoid glycosides in the fruit and leaves of Zizyphus jujuba var. inermis (Bunge) Rehder (jujube). A total of six flavonoids (five flavonols and one chalcone) were identified in jujube fruit and leaves by using ultra-performance liquid chromatography-diode array detector-quadrupole time of flight mass spectrometry along with chemical library and an internal standard. In positive ion mode, six flavonoids were linked to the C- and O-glycosides which were conjugated with sugar moieties based on kaempferol, quercetin, and phloretin aglycones. Total flavonoid contents of leaves (8,356.5 mg/100 g dry weight (DW)) was approximately 900-fold higher than that of fruit (fresh fruit, 13.6 mg/100 g dry DW; sun-dried fruits, 9.2 mg/100 g dry DW). Quercetin 3-O-rutinoside (rutin) and quercetin 3-O-robinobioside were the predominant flavonols in fruit and leaves of jujube. In particular, rutin had the highest content (6,735.2 mg/100 g DW) in leaves, and rutin is a widely reported bioactive compound. Phloretin 3',5'-di-C-glucoside (chalcone type) was detected only in leaves. The leaves of jujube contain a high content of flavonoids and the results of this study indicate that jujube leaves may be a source of bioactive flavonoids.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.631-636
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• 2019

A new nitric oxide-induced (NOI) gene was isolated by screening ESTs from a cDNA library of dehydration-treated fibrous roots of sweetpotato (Ipomoea batatas). The 720 bp cDNA fragment, IbNOI, was sequenced, from which a 77 amino acid residue protein was deduced. A search of the protein BLAST database identified significant similarity to other plant NOI protein sequences. Quantitative RT-PCR analysis revealed diverse expression patterns of IbNOI in various tissues of the intact sweetpotato plant, and in leaves exposed to different stresses. The IbNOI gene was highly expressed in storage roots and suspension-cultured cells. In leaf tissues, IbNOI showed strong expression during sodium nitroprusside (SNP)-induced NO accumulation and chemical stress treatments. Expression of IbNOI was also induced under various abiotic stress conditions, such as dehydration, salt, and bacterial pathogen infection. These results suggest that IbNOI is involved in plant responses to diverse abiotic stresses and pathogen infection through a NO-related pathway.