• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Crop Science Conference
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• 2022.10a
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• pp.30-30
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• 2022

Philippines is the second world supplier of coconut by-products. As its first major genomics project, the Philippine Genome Center program for Agriculture (PGC-Agriculture) took the challenge to sequence and assemble the whole coconut genome. The project aims to provide advance genetics tools for our collaborating coconut researchers while taking the opportunity to initiate local capacity. Combination of different NGS platforms was explored and the Philippine 'Catigan Green Dwarf' (CATD) variety was selected with the breeders to be the crop's reference genome. A high quality genome assembly of CATD was generated and used to characterize important genes of coconut towards the development of resilient and outstanding varieties especially for added high-value traits. The talk will present the significant results of the project as published in various papers including the first report of whole genome sequence of a dwarf coconut variety. Updates will include the challenges hurdled and specific applications such as gene mining for host insect resistance and screening for least damaged coconuts (thus potentially insect resistant varieties). Genome-wide DNA markers as published and genes related to coconut oil qualitative/quantitative traits will also be presented, including initial molecular/biochemical studies that support nutritional and medicinal claims. A web-based genome database is currently built for ease access and wider utility of these genomics tools. Indeed, a major milestone accomplished by the coconut genomics research team, which was facilitated with the all-out government support and strong collaboration among multidisciplinary experts and partnership with advance research institutes.

• Proceedings of the Zoological Society Korea Conference
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• 1999.04a
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• pp.28-28
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• 1999

No Abstract, See Full Text

• Proceedings of the PSK Conference
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• 2000.10a
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• pp.47-49
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• 2000

• Proceedings of the Microbiological Society of Korea Conference
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• 1998.04a
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• pp.59.1-59.1
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• 1998

• Genomics & Informatics
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.98-104
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• 2014

Approximately 45% of the human genome is comprised of transposable elements (TEs). Results from the Human Genome Project have emphasized the biological importance of TEs. Many studies have revealed that TEs are not simply "junk" DNA, but rather, they play various roles in processes, including genome evolution, gene expression regulation, genetic instability, and cancer disposition. The effects of TE insertion in the genome varies from negligible to disease conditions. For the past two decades, many studies have shown that TEs are the causative factors of various genetic disorders and cancer. TEs are a subject of interest worldwide, not only in terms of their clinical aspects but also in basic research, such as evolutionary tracking. Although active TEs contribute to genetic instability and disease states, non-long terminal repeat transposons are well studied, and their roles in these processes have been confirmed. In this review, we will give an overview of the importance of TEs in studying genome evolution and genetic instability, and we suggest that further in-depth studies on the mechanisms related to these phenomena will be useful for both evolutionary tracking and clinical diagnostics.

• The Korean Journal of Malacology
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.317-326
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• 2010

The availability of fast and inexpensive sequencing technology has enabled researchers around the world to conduct many genome sequencing and expressed sequence tag (EST) projects of diverse organisms. In recent years, whole genome projects have been undertaken to sequence ten species from the phylum Mollusca. These include Aplysia californica, Lottia gigantea, Crassostrea virginica, Spisula solidissima, Mytilus californianus, Biomphalaria glabrata, Crepidula fornicata, Elysia chlorotica, Lottia scutum and Radix balthica. Additionally, complete mitochondrial genomes of 91 mollusks have been reported. In Korea, EST projects have been conducted in nine mollusk species that include Nesiohelix samarangae, Pisidium (Neopisidium) coreanum, Physa acuta, Incilaria fruhstorferi, Meretrix lusoria, Ruditapes philippinarum, Nordotis gigantea, Crassostrea gigas and Laternula elliptica. Finally, the mitochondrial genome projects from the Pacific Oyster (Crassostrea gigas) and the rock shell (Thais clavigera) have been conducted and reported. However, no systemic mollusk genome project has so far been conducted in Korea. In this report, the current status and research trends in mollusk genome study in Korea will be discussed.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.153-165
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• 2010

Brassica rapa is considered an ideal candidate to act as a reference species for Brassica genomic studies. Among the three basic Brassica species, B. rapa (AA genome) has the smallest genome (529 Mbp), compared to B. nigra (BB genome, 632 Mbp) and B. oleracea (CC genome, 696 Mbp). There is also a large collection of available cultivars of B. rapa, as well as a broad array of B. rapa genomic resources available. Under international consensus, various genomic studies on B. rapa have been conducted, including the construction of a physical map based on 22.5X genome coverage, end sequencing of 146,000 BACs, sequencing of >150,000 expressed sequence tags, and successful phase 2 shotgun sequencing of 589 euchromatic region-tiling BACs based on comparative positioning with the Arabidopsis genome. These sequenced BACs mapped onto the B. rapa genome provide beginning points for genome sequencing of each chromosome. Applying this strategy, all of the 10 chromosomes of B. rapa have been assigned to the sequencing centers in seven countries, Korea, UK, China, India, Canada, Australia, and Japan. The two longest chromosomes, A3 and A9, have been sequenced except for several gaps, by NAAS in Korea. Meanwhile a China group, including IVF and BGI, performed whole genome sequencing with Illumina system. These Sanger and NGS sequence data will be integrated to assemble a draft sequence of B. rapa. The imminent B. rapa genome sequence offers novel insights into the organization and evolution of the Brassica genome. In parallel, the transfer of knowledge from B. rapa to other Brassica crops would be expected.

• Genomics & Informatics
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.136-140
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• 2009

Genome-wide association (GWA) studies may benefit from the inclusion of imputed SNPs into their dataset. Due to its predictive nature, the imputation process is typically not perfect. Thus, it would be desirable to develop a scheme for filtering out the imputed SNPs by maximizing the concordance with the observed genotypes. We report such a scheme, which is based on the combination of several parameters that are calculated by PLINK, a popular GWA analysis software program. We imputed the genotypes of 8,842 Korean individuals, based on approximately 2 million SNP genotypes of the CHB＋JPT panel in the International HapMap Project Phase II data, complementing the 352k SNPs in the original Affymetrix 5.0 dataset. A total of 333,418 SNPs were found in both datasets, with a median concordance rate of 98.7%. The concordance rates were calculated at different ranges of parameters, such as the number of proxy SNPs (NPRX), the fraction of successfully imputed individuals (IMPUTED), and the information content (INFO). The poor concordance that was observed at the lower values of the parameters allowed us to develop an optimal combination of the cutoffs (IMPUTED${\geq}$0.9 and INFO${\geq}$0.9). A total of 1,026,596 SNPs passed the cutoff, of which 94,364 were found in both datasets and had 99.4% median concordance. This study illustrates a conservative scheme for filtering imputed SNPs that would be useful in GWA studies.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Bioinformatics Conference
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• 2005.09a
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• pp.147-150
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• 2005

Proper PCR primer design determines the success or failure of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) reactions. In this project, we develop GENE-PRIMER, a genomes specific PCR primer design program that is amenable to a genome-wide scale. To achieve this, we incorporated various parameters with biological significance into our program, namely, primer length, melting temperature of primers Tm, guanine/cytosine (GC) content of primer, homopolymeric runs in primer and self-hybridization tendency of primer. In addition, BLAST algorithm is utilized for the purpose of primer specificity check. In summary, selected primers adhered to both physico-chemical criteria and also display specificity to intended binding site in the genome.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Bioinformatics Conference
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• 2000.11a
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• pp.69-70
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• 2000

The completion of sequencing human genome would motivate us to map millions of human cDNAs onto the unique ruler "genome sequence", in order to identify the exact address of each cDNA together with its exons, its promoter region, and its alternative splicing patterns. The expression patterns of some cDNAs could therefore be associated with these precise gene addresses, which further accelerate studies on mining correlations between motifs of promoters and expressions of genes in tissues. Towards the realization of this goal, we have developed a time-and-space efficient software named SQUALL that is able to map one cDNA sequence of length a few thousand onto a long genome sequence of length thirty million in a couple of minutes on average. Using SQUALL, we have mapped twenty thousand of our Bodymap (http://bodymap.ims.u-tokyo.ac.jp) cDNAs onto the genome sequences of Chr.21st and 22nd. In this talk, I will report the status of this ongoing project.