• Molecules and Cells
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.385-389
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• 2008

Septins are a family of filament-forming GTP-binding proteins involved in a variety of cellular process such as cytokinesis, exocytosis, and membrane dynamics. Here we report the biochemical and immunocytochemical characterization of a recently identified mammalian septin, SEPT12. SEPT12 binds GTP in vitro, and a mutation (Gly56 to Asn) in the GTP-binding motif abolished binding. Immunocytochemical analysis revealed that wild-type SEPT12 formed filamentous structures when transiently expressed in Hela cells whereas $SEPT12^{G56A}$ generated large aggregates. In addition, wild-type SEPT12 failed to form filaments when coexpressed with $SEPT12^{G56A}$. We also observed that GTP-binding by SEPT12 is required for interaction with SEPT11 but not with itself.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.23 no.7
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• pp.1031-1040
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• 2013

Candida albicans is a dimorphic fungus that commensally colonizes human mucosal surfaces. The aim of this study was to assess the role of different C. albicans morphologies in inducing pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) and cytokines in macrophages. Macrophages may respond to pathogen-associated molecular patterns via TLR2 and TLR4 by expressing cytokines. The hyphal transition of C. albicans was induced by 20% serum (S), RPMI-1640 (R), or $39^{\circ}C$ culture (H). Macrophages were then challenged with either yeast (Y) or different hyphae cultures of C. albicans, followed by RT-PCR and FACS analysis of PRRs expression. In addition, macrophages were stimulated with either yeast or different hyphae cultures of C. albicans used by RT-PCR and Bio-Plex analysis of cytokines production. Macrophages expressed high levels of TLR4 and dectin-1 after stimulation with Y cells. In contrast, stimulation with H or R cells strongly increased the expression of TLR2 and dectin-2. Stimulation with Y cells significantly enhanced the expression of IL-$1{\beta}$ and weakly increased the expression of IL-6 and IL-12. Stimulation with hyphal cells (S, R, and H) strongly increased IL-10 expression, but weakly reduced IL-$1{\beta}$ expression. The phagocytosis activity and NO production of macrophages were decreased upon treatment with hyphal cells compared with yeast, and depended on the length of hyphae. In summary, the yeast and hyphae forms of C. albicans resulted in an induction of different PRRs, with accompanying differences in immune cell cytokine profiles.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.755-764
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• 2000

Fate and transport of hydrophobic organic contaminants can be influenced by naturally-existing humic substances and surfactants applied to wash polluted soils in the subsurface environment. The objective of this paper is to study the solubility enhancement of four PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon) and p,p'-DDT in humic acid and surfactant solutions. As the number of aromatic ring is increased, the extent of solubility enhancement of PAHs by humic acid increased. Although the hydrophobicity of p,p'-DDT was the largest among five organic compounds used, the extent of solubility enhancement of p,p'-DDT by humic acid was lower than that of pyrene. In case of anionic surfactants, the extent of the increased solubility of five organic compounds by SDS and SDDBS was increased linearly, but the extent of the increased solubility of p,p'-DDT by MADS-12 was lower than that of perylene.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.62-67
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• 1993

The microscopic origin of nonlinear optical properties of quinoline derivatives have been investigated theoretically using MOPAC-AM1 method. In order to prepare promising nonlinear optical active polymers of polyquinoline derivatives, the optimized positions of strong electron donor and electron acceptor are determined in the heterocyclic ring for the energetically favorable structures. For each compound, the effect of the substituted positions on the microscopic nonlinear coefficients were investigated. Polyquinoline was already evaluated to have outstanding physical and mechanical properties so that its monomeric analogues were designed and synthesized for developing new second and third order nonlinear optical main chain polymers. Using the MOPAC-AM1 method, properties calculated include the intrinsic ground-state dipole moments, the polarizabilities, first and second hyperpolarizabilities under the condition of finite-field $(\omega$ = 0).

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.54 no.6
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• pp.506-510
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• 2017

One of the characteristics of polycrystalline graphene that determines its material properties is grain size. Mechanical properties such as Young's modulus, yield strain and tensile strength depend on the grain size and show a reverse Hall-Petch effect at small grain size limit for some properties under certain conditions. While there is agreement on the grain size effect for Young's modulus and yield strain, certain MD simulations have led to disagreement for tensile strength. Song et al. showed a decreasing behavior for tensile strength, that is, a pseudo Hall-Petch effect for the small grain size domain up to 5 nm. On the other hand, Sha et al. showed an increasing behavior, a reverse Hall-Petch effect, for grain size domain up to 10 nm. Mortazavi et al. also showed results similar to those of Sha et al. We suspect that the main difference of these two inconsistent results is due to the different modeling. The modeling of polycrystalline graphene with regular size and (hexagonal) shape shows the pseudo Hall-Petch effect, while the modeling with random size and shape shows the reverse Hall-Petch effect. Therefore, this study is conducted to confirm that different modeling is the main reason for the different behavior of tensile strength of the polycrystalline structures. We conducted MD simulations with models derived from the Voronoi tessellation for two types of grain size distributions. One type is grains of relatively similar sizes; the other is grains of random sizes. We found that the pseudo Hall-Petch effect and the reverse Hall-Petch effect of tensile strength were consistently shown for the two different models. We suspect that this result comes from the different crack paths, which are related to the grain patterns in the models.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.647-659
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• 2008

Colloids are a heterogeneous system in which particles of a few nanometers to hundreds micrometers in size are finely dispersed in liquid medium, but show homogeneous properties in macroscopic scale. They have attracted much attention not only as model systems of natural atomic and molecular self-assembled structures but also as novel structural materials of practical applications in a wide range of areas. In particular, recent advances in colloidal science have focused on nano-bio materials and devices which are essential for drug discovery and delivery, diagnostics and biomedical applications. In this review, first we introduce nano-bio colloidal systems and surface modification of colloidal particles which creates various functional groups. Then, various methods of fabrication of colloidal particles using holographic lithography, microfluidics and virus templates are discussed in detail. Finally, various applications of colloids in metal inks, three-dimensional photonic crystals and two-dimensional nanopatterns are also reviewed as representative potential applications.

• Genomics & Informatics
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.142-146
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• 2008

In order to understand the protein functions that are related to disease, it is important to detect the correlation between amino acid mutations and disease. Many mutation studies about disease-related proteins have been carried out through molecular biology techniques, such as vector design, protein engineering, and protein crystallization. However, experimental protein mutation studies are time-consuming, be it in vivo or in vitro. We therefore performed a bioinformatic analysis of known disease-related mutations and their protein structure changes in order to analyze the correlation between mutation and disease. For this study, we selected 111 diseases that were related to 175 proteins from the PDB database and 710 mutations that were found in the protein structures. The mutations were acquired from the Human Gene Mutation Database (HGMD). We selected point mutations, excluding only insertions or deletions, for detecting structural changes. To detect a structural change by mutation, we analyzed not only the structural properties (distance of pocket and mutation, pocket size, surface size, and stability), but also the physico-chemical properties (weight, instability, isoelectric point (IEP), and GRAVY score) for the 710 mutations. We detected that the distance between the pocket and disease-related mutation lay within $20\;{\AA}$ (98.5%, 700 proteins). We found that there was no significant correlation between structural stability and disease-causing mutations or between hydrophobicity changes and critical mutations. For large-scale mutational analysis of disease-causing mutations, our bioinformatics approach, using 710 structural mutations, called "Structural Mutatomics," can help researchers to detect disease-specific mutations and to understand the biological functions of disease-related proteins.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.953-958
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• 2010

A laser ablation-molecular beam/reflectron time-of-flight mass spectrometric technique was used to investigate the ion-molecule reactions that proceed within $Ti^+(CH_3COCH_3)_n$ heterocluster ions. The reactions of $Ti^+$ with $CH_3COCH_3$ clusters were found to be dominated exclusively by an oxidation reaction, which produced $TiO^+(CH_3COCH_3)_n$ clusters. These ions were attributed to the insertion of a $Ti^+$ ion into the C=O bond of the acetone molecule within the heteroclusters, followed by $C_3H_6$ elimination. The mass spectra also indicated the formation of minor sequences of heterocluster ions with the formulas $Ti^+(C_3H_4O)(CH_3COCH_3)_n$ and $TiO^+(OH)(CH_3COCH_3)_n$, which could be attributed to C-H bond insertion followed by $H_2$ elimination and to the sequential OH abstraction by the $TiO^+$ ion, respectively. Density functional theory calculations were carried out to model the structures and binding energies of both the association complexes and the relevant reaction products. The reaction pathways and energetics of the $TiO^+\;+\;CH_2CHCH_3$ product channel are presented.

• BMB Reports
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.541-547
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• 2000

Fluorescence polarization of 1,6-diphenyl-1,3,5-hexatriene (DPH) was used to evaluate the effects of chlorpromazine HCl on the range of the rotational mobility of bulk bilayer structure of the synaptosomal plasma membrane vesicles (SPMV) isolated from a bovine brain. In a dose-dependent manner, chlorpromazine HCl increased the anisotropy (r), limiting anisotropy ($r_{\infty}$) and order parameter (S) of DPH in the membranes. Cationic 1-[4-(trimethylammonio)-phenyl]-6-phenylhexa-1,3,5-hexatriene (TMA-DPH) and anionic 3-[p-(6-phenyl)-1,3,5-hexatrienyl]-phenylpropionic acid (PRO-DPH) were utilized to examine the range of transbilayer asymmetric rotational mobility of the neuronal membranes. The anisotropy (r) of TMA-DPH in the inner monolayer was 0.034 greater than the value of PRO-DPH in the outer monolayer of the membranes. Both cationic TMA-DPH and anionic PRO-DPH were also used to examine the transbilayer asymmetric effects of chlorpromazine HCl on the range of rotational mobility of the membranes. Chlorpromazine HCl have a decreasing effects on the rotational mobility of the bulk bilayer structures and have a greater decreasing effect on the mobility of the inner monolayer as compared to the outer monolayer of the membranes. It has been proven that chlorpromazine HCl exhibit a selective rather than nonselective fluidizing effect within the transbilayer domains of the SPMV.

• Advances in materials Research
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.139-149
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• 2014

Surface enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) has attracted attention because the technique enables detection of various chemicals, even down to single molecular scale. Among the diverse candidates for SERS substrates, Au nanoparticles are considered promising due to their fine optical properties, chemical stability and ease of surface modification. Therefore, the fabrication and optical characterization of gold particles on solid supports is highly desirable. Such structures have potential as SERS substrates because the localized surface plasmon resonance of gold nanoparticles is very sensitive to combined molecules and environments. In addition, it is well-known that the properties of Au nanoparticles are strongly dependent on their shape. In this work, arrays of shape-controlled Au nanoparticles were fabricated to exploit their enhanced and reproducible optical properties. First, shape-controlled Au nanoparticles were prepared via seed mediated solution-phase synthesis, including spheres, octahedra, and rhombic dodecahedra. Then, these shape-controlled Au nanoparticles were arranged on a PDMS substrate, which was nanopatterned using soft lithography of poly styrene particles. The Au nanoparticles were selectively located in a pattern of hexagonal spheres. In addition, the shape-controlled Au nanoparticles were arranged in various sizes of PDMS nanopatterns, which can be easily controlled by manipulating the size of polystyrene particles. Finally, the optical properties of the fabricated Au nanoparticle arrays were characterized by measuring surface enhanced Raman spectra with 4-nitrobenezenethiol.