• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.366-374
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• 2015

Herein, we established a repeated-batch process for ethanol production from glycerol by immobilized Pachysolen tannophilus. The aim of this study was to develop a more practical and applicable ethanol production process for biofuel. In particular, using industrial-grade medium ingredients, the microaeration rate was optimized for maximization of the ethanol production, and the relevant metabolic parameters were then analyzed. The microaeration rate of 0.11 vvm, which is far lower than those occurring in a shaking flask culture, was found to be the optimal value for ethanol production from glycerol. In addition, it was found that, among those tested, Celite was a more appropriate carrier for the immobilization of P. tannophilus to induce production of ethanol from glycerol. Finally, through a repeated-batch culture, the ethanol yield (Y_e/g) of 0.126 ± 0.017 g-ethanol/g-glycerol (n = 4) was obtained, and this value was remarkably comparable with a previous report. In the future, it is expected that the results of this study will be applied for the development of a more practical and profitable long-term ethanol production process, thanks to the industrial-grade medium preparation, simple immobilization method, and easy repeated-batch operation.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.723-735
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• 2018

Indicators to quantitatively assess the physical conditions can help optimize the effectiveness of rehabilitation therapy for stroke patients. The body composition variations in the paretic and non-paretic regions of stroke patients with cerebral infarction (7 males, 31 females) were analyzed using multi-frequency bioelectrical impedance. Specifically, resistance (R), lean mass (LM), fat mass (FM), extracellular water (ECW), intracellular water (ICW), R/LM relation, basal metabolic rate (BMR)/LM relation were utilized to evaluate the paretic and non-paretic regions of subjects with cerebral infarction. These values showed significant differences in gender and paretic/non-paretic regions. R and FM were high but LM and ICW were lower in female and paralysis. ECW was lower in females than males, but there was no considerable difference between paralysis and non-paralysis in both males and females. In addition, there was an inverse distribution between R and LM in paretic and non-paretic regions, with males on the upper left and females on the lower right. Furthermore, the relationship between BMR and LM showed excellent linearity (slope: 22.17 kcal/day/kg) irrespective of gender, paralysis, and non-paralysis. An easy, non-invasive and quantitative assessment using bioelectrical impedance would provide an useful tool for evaluating patients with cerebral infarction receiving rehabilitation therapy.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.19-26
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• 2008

Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) is a computational method to identify statistically significant gene sets showing significant differences between two groups of microarray expression profiles and simultaneously uncover their biological meanings in an elegant way by employing gene annotation databases, such as Cytogenetic Band, KEGG pathways, gene ontology, and etc. For the gone set enrichment analysis, all the genes in a given dataset are first ordered by the signal-to-noise ratio between the groups and then further analyses are proceeded. Despite of its impressive results in several previous studies, however, gene ranking by the signal-to-noise ratio makes it difficult to consider highly up-regulated genes and highly down-regulated genes at the same time as the candidates of significant genes, which possibly reflect certain situations incurred in metabolic and signaling pathways. To deal with this problem, in this article, we investigate the gene set enrichment analysis method with Fisher criterion for gene ranking and also evaluate its effects in Leukemia related pathway analyses.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.439-446
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• 2016

Domestic sewerage treatment plant is operated by activated sludge method and its modified method by using microorganism. In most cases, a method of using microorganism is directly controlled by the operator based on individual judgment through factors of DO, pH and ORP. In addition, under aerobic condition in bioreactor, energy consumption including excessive air injection is learned to be somewhat plenty. In order to solve this problem, in most of the process, improvement of internal recycling and activated environmental factor of microorganism were researched extensively. However, as factors are changed depending on various conditions, it is not sufficient as an indicator of judgment. As such, a research on operation of bioreactor that measures metabolic change in short time by directly measuring activated condition of microorganism using NADH fluorometer is required in reality.It is considered that the method like this could supplement problem of energy consumption being occurred in the existing treatment method and operational optimization of bioreactor would be enabled by controlling optimal air volume. Therefore, in this study, in order to obtain optimal operational indicator of bioreactor, proper air volume control test was performed and through batch test and site evaluation, possibility of NADH sensor being utilized as operational control indicator of bioreactor is intended to be analyzed. In order to compare with measured value, DO, ORP that are operational control indicator of existing bioreactor were used. As MLSS concentration was increased through batch test, NADH value was increased and site evaluation also showed similar tendency to batch test. Resultantly, it could be confirmed that changing level of NADH fluorometer was a sensor that could measure bioreactor condition effectively and optimized scale of bioreactor is considered to be utilized.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.1163-1168
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• 2016

Cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) is the bile duct cancer which constitutes one of the important public health problems in Thailand with high mortality rate, especially in the Opisthorchis viverrini (a parasite risk factor for CCA) endemic area of the northeastern region of the country. This study aimed to identify potential biomarkers from the plasma peptidome by CCA patients. Peptides were isolated using 10 kDa cut-off filter column and the flow-through was then used as a peptidome for LC-MS/MS analysis. A total of 209 peptides were obtained. Among these, 15 peptides were concerned with signaling pathways and 12 related to metabolic, regulatory, and biosynthesis of secondary metabolite pathways. Five exclusive peptides were identified as potential biomarkers, i.e. ETS domain-containing transcription factor ERF (P50548), KIAA0220 (Q92617), phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate 3-kinase catalytic subunit beta isoform isoform 1 (P42338), LP2209 (Q6XYC0), and casein kinase II subunit alpha (P19784). Three of these biomarkers are signaling related molecules. A combination of these biomarkers for CCA diagnosis is proposed.

• Journal of Plant Biotechnology
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.9-14
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• 2011

To determine whether pattern recognition based on metabolite fingerprinting for whole cell extracts can be used to discriminate cultivars metabolically, leaves of nine commercial Orostachys plants were subjected to Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). FT-IR spectral data from leaves were analyzed by principal component analysis (PCA) and Partial least square discriminant analysis (PLS-DA). The dendrogram based on hierarchical clustering analysis of these PLS-DA data separated the nine Orostachys species into five major groups. The first group consisted of O. iwarenge 'Yimge', 'Jeju', 'Jeongsun' and O. margaritifolius 'Jinju' whereas in the second group, 'Sacheon' was clustered with 'Busan,' both of which belong to O. malacophylla species. However, 'Samchuk', belong to O. malacophylla was not clustered with the other O. malacophylla species. In addition, O. minuta and O. japonica were separated to the other Orostachys plants. Thus we suggested that the hierarchical dendrogram based on PLS-DA of FT-IR spectral data from leaves represented the most probable chemotaxonomical relationship between commercial Orostachys plants. Furthermore these metabolic discrimination systems could be applied for reestablishment of precise taxonomic classification of commercial Orostachys plants.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.287-293
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• 2012

Objectives: Metabolic syndrome has received attention as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, with particular importance attached to visceral fat accumulation, which is associated with lifestyle-related diseases and is strongly correlated with waist circumference. In this study, our aim is to propose waist circumference cut-off values that can be used as a marker for fatty liver based on a sample of workers receiving health checkups in Japan. Methods: This study was conducted in a total of 21,866 workers who underwent periodic health checkups between January 2007 and December 2007. The mean age of the subjects was 47.4 years for men (standard deviation [SD]: 8.0) and 44.7 years for women (SD: 6.9). Evaluation included abdominal ultrasound and measurement of waist circumference, body mass index, fasting blood glucose, triglycerides, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and blood pressure. Results: Based on receiver operating characteristic curve analysis, the optimal waist circumference cut-off values were shown as 85.0 cm (sensitivity 0.72, specificity 0.69) for men and 80.0 cm (sensitivity 0.75, specificity 0.78) for women. Conclusion: Abdominal ultrasound is the most efficient means of diagnosing fatty liver, but this examination seldom occurs because the test is not routinely performed at workers' health checkups. In people found to have a high risk of fatty liver, recommendations can be made for abdominal ultrasound based on the waist circumference cut-off values obtained in this study. That is, waist circumference can be used in high risk individuals as an effective marker for early detection of fatty liver.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.306-315
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• 2017

Metabolic engineering with a high-yielding mutant, A. terreus AN37, was performed to enhance the production of itaconic acid (IA). Reportedly, the gene cluster for IA biosynthesis is composed of four genes: reg (regulator), mtt (mitochondrial transporter), cad (cis-aconitate decarboxylase), and mfs (membrane transporter). By overexpressing each gene of the IA gene cluster in A. terreus AN37 transformed by the restriction enzyme-mediated integration method, several transformants showing high productivity of IA were successfully obtained. One of the AN37/cad transformants could produce a very high amount of IA (75 g/l) in shake-flask cultivations, showing an average of 5% higher IA titer compared with the high-yielding control strain. Notably, in the case of the mfs transformants, a maximal increase of 18.3% in IA production was observed relative to the control strain under the identical fermentation conditions. Meanwhile, the overexpression of reg and mtt genes showed no significant improvements in IA production. In summary, the overexpressed cis-aconitate decarboxylase (CAD) and putative membrane transporter (MFS) appeared to have positive influences on the enhanced IA productivity of the respective transformant. The maximal increases of 13.6~18.3% in IA productivity of the transformed strains should be noted, since the parallel mother strain used in this study is indeed a very high-performance mutant that has been obtained through intensive rational screening programs in our laboratory.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.28 no.8
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• pp.1293-1298
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• 2018

Phosphomannomutase (ManB) converts mannose-6-phosphate (M-6-P) to mannose-1-phosphate (M-1-P), which is a key metabolic precursor for the production of GDP-D-mannose used for production of glycoconjugates and post-translational modification of proteins. The aim of this study was to express the manB gene from Escherichia coli in Lactococcus lactis subsp. cremoris NZ9000 and to characterize the encoded enzyme. The manB gene from E. coli K12, of 1,371 bp and encoding 457 amino acids (52 kDa), was cloned and overexpressed in L. lactis NZ9000 using the nisin-controlled expression system. The enzyme was purified by Ni-NTA column chromatography and exhibited a specific activity of 5.34 units/mg, significantly higher than that of other previously reported ManB enzymes. The pH and temperature optima were 8.0 and $50^{\circ}C$, respectively. Interestingly, the ManB used in this study had two substrate specificity for both mannose-1-phosphate and glucose-1-phosphate, and the specific activity for glucose-1-phosphate was 3.76 units/mg showing 70% relative activity to that of mannose-1-phosphate. This is the first study on heterologous expression and characterization of ManB in lactic acid bacteria. The ManB expression system constructed in this study canbe used to synthesize rare sugars or glycoconjugates.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.135-143
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• 2012

Arterial stiffness is causing the serious problems for human who is suffered from hypertension and metabolic syndrome. So it is important that measure the arterial stiffness for early prevention. Many researches point out that pulse wave velocity(PWV) is the reliable and simple method to predict arterial stiffness. In this paper, we developed the sensing parts that detect the pulse wave and ECG by using piezoelectric film and conductive textile with elastic band. Our system could detect 3ch pulse wave and ECG. Simultaneously, our algorithm extracts the features for calculating the delays among pulse waves. The delays are the significant parameter to estimate PWV, thus we design the experiment for evaluating the performance of our sensing parts. The reference is PP-1000(HanByul Meditech, Korea) that is good for performance evaluation. As a result, the start point of the pulse wave was the most reliable feature for comparing with PP-1000(r=0.691, P=0.00). The results between two operators showed that there is only a slight difference in the reproducibility of the devices. In conclusion, we assume that the suggested sensor could be more comfortable and faithful method for arterial stiffness.