• Proceedings of the KSAR Conference
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• 2001.03a
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• pp.16-16
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• 2001

Apoptosis로 일컬어지는 예정된 세포사멸(programmed cell death)은 개별 세포의 입장에서는 곧바로 사멸을 의미하지만, 정상적인 고등 생물의 입장에서는 개체의 발생과 분화하는데 프로그램된 과정이다. 자발적 세포사멸은 다른 조직에 비해 생식 조직인 난소나 정소에서 복잡한 apoptosis 기작들을 가지리라 사료된다. 본 연구는 Bcl-2 family중 apoptotic protein인 Bax에 대해 suppression하는 유전자를 yeast system을 활용하여 돼지 정소와 난소로부터 각각 cDNA library를 구축한 후 탐색하였다. 탐색에 활용된 cDNA library는 돼지의 정소와 난소로부터 mRNA를 분리하여 yeast vector인 pAD-GAL4-2.1에 구축하였고, 마우스 bax 유전자는 gal 1 promoter의 조절 하에 glucose 배지에서는 유도되지 않고, galactose 배지에서만 선택적으로 Bax를 발현할 수 있는 효모 vector(pL19-bax)를 구축하였다. Bax에 의한 apoptosis suppressor를 탐색하기 위해 우선 효모 W303에 pL19-bax를 transform하여 glucose 배지에서 Bax의 발현을 억제하였다. pL19-bax를 가진 효모에 정소와 난소로부터 구축된 cDNA library를 transform 시키고, transform된 효모는 각각 Bax에 의한 toxicity를 저해하는 유전자를 찾기 위해 스크린되었다. 이러한 방법으로 정소 cDNA library 탐색에서는 5 $\times$ $10^{6}$ transformant중 39개, 난소cDNA library 탐색에서는 2 $\times$ $10^{6}$ transformant중 26개의 콜로니가 생존하였다. 이들 콜로니로부터 유전자를 분리하여 분석해 본 결과 여러 그룹으로 분류할 수 있었다. 각 그룹의 관련 유전자는 protein synthesis/degradation 12종, oxidation/reductation 5종, detoxin/ cell cycle promoter 3종, signal transduction/growth factor 5종, 그리고 알려지지 않은 유전자 9종이었다. 그 중, bax-toxicity inhibition에 강력한 survival phenotype을 가지는 유전자(pSEDL)를 동정하였다. 이것은 T3-4-1 콜로니로부터 분리하였는데 140개 아미노산으로 이루어진 인간 SEDL(GenBank, XM_013096) 유전자와 매우 유사한 homology를 가지며, bax와 관련된 기능은 밝혀져 있지 않다. 이외에도 분리된 유전자에는 NADH, thioreduction, 그리고 cytochrome oxidase와 같은 positive 유전자 군이 크로닝되어, Bax를 이용한 효모에서 apoptosis suppressor에 관련된 유전자를 손쉽게 스크린하는 것이 가능하고, 분리된 유전자의 기능을 예측할 수 있어 지금까지 보고된 유전자 크로닝법 보다는 강력한 수단으로 활용될 수 있다는 사실을 시사하였다. 그러나, ORF에 관계없이 Bax 발현에 저항하는 유전자군이 선발된다든지 하는 문제점은 금후 검토가 필요하리라 사료된다.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.50 no.1
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• pp.124-130
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• 2013

In this paper, a new motion estimation algorithm with low-computational complexity is proposed to improve the performance of H.264/AVC. The proposed architecture uses the directions of the median motion vector which is computed by the motion vectors of the three neighbor macroblocks in Integer Motion Estimation. By using the directions of the vector, the proposed architecture has a single computational level instead of multi-computational levels in Integer Motion Estimation. The proposed motion estimation is synthesized using the TSMC 0.18um standard cell library. The synthesis result shows that the gate count is about 217.92K at 166MHz and it was improved about 69% compared with previous one.

• Korean journal of applied entomology
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.91-97
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• 2015

The sweetpotato whitefly, Bemisia tabaci, is the major insect pest that transmitted over 100 plant viruses including tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) of tomato plant as virus vector in the world. In this study, cDNA library of whitefly was constructed using Gateway system for selecting target gene in order to control of B. tabaci using virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) vector with RNAi. First of all, when using oligo d(T) rimer, the calculated titer of cDNA library was confirmed with $1.4{\times}10^4$ clones and average insert sizes was confirmed with 1 kb. However, insert size was very big for construction of cDNA. Otherwise, when using attB-N25 random primer and sonication for 6 sec, the calculated titer of cDNA library was confirmed with $1.04{\times}10^5$ clones. But mostly insert band wasn't identified on the electrophoresis, because it seemed that insert size is too small (${\leq}100bp$), also the size of identified insert was somewhat big. Finally, when using oligo d(T) primer and sonication for 1 sec, cDNA insert of whitefly was appropriated for VIGS with 300-600 bp. However, cDNA sequence included a poly A and titer was very low to $5.2{\times}10^2$ clones. It was supposed that heat shock transformation was used instead of electro-transformation. It is considered that when constructing cDNA library for using VIGS vector, (1) random primer should be used for First strand cDNA synthesis in order to remove poly A and (2) sonication for 1 sec should be performed in order to get appropriated insert size and (3) electro-transformation should be performed in order to improve transformation efficiency.

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.74-82
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• 2005

Glutaredoxins (Grxs) are thioloxidoreductases which are required for maintaining thiol/disulfide equilibrium in living cells. The Grx3 gene, which encodes one of the three monothiol Grxs in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe, was characterized, and its transcriptional regulation studied. Genomic DNA encoding Grx3 was isolated by PCR, and a plasmid pTT3 carrying this DNA was produced. The DNA sequence has 1,267 bp, which would encode a monothiol Grx of 166 amino acids with a molecular mass of 18.3 kDa. The putative protein has 27% homology with Grx5, and contains many hydrophobic amino acid residues in its N-terminal region. S. pombe cells harboring pTT3 had increased Grx activity and enhanced survival on minimal medium plates containing aluminum (5 mM), BSO (0.05 mM), menadione (0.01 mM) or cadmium (0.2 mM). The 568 bp upstream region of Grx3 was fused into the promoterless b-galactosidase gene of the shuttle vector YEp367R to generate fusion plasmid pMJS10. Potassium chloride (KCl) and metals including aluminum and cadmium enhanced the synthesis of ${\beta}$-galactosidase from the fusion gene. The synthesis of ${\beta}$-galactosidase was also enhanced, in a Pap1-dependent manner, by fermentable carbon sources such as glucose (at low concentrations) and sucrose, but not by non-fermentable carbon sources such as ethanol and acetate. Grx3 mRNA increased in response to treatment with BSO. These observations indicate that S. pombe Grx3 is involved in the response to stress, and is regulated by stress.

• The Plant Pathology Journal
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.108-114
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• 2015

Curvularia lunata is an important maize foliar fungal pathogen that distributes widely in maize growing area in China, and several key pathogenic factors have been isolated. An yeast two-hybrid (Y2H) library is a very useful platform to further unravel novel pathogenic factors in C. lunata. To construct a high-quality full length-expression cDNA library from the C. lunata for application to pathogenesis-related protein-protein interaction screening, total RNA was extracted. The SMART (Switching Mechanism At 5' end of the RNA Transcript) technique was used for cDNA synthesis. Double-stranded cDNA was ligated into the pGADT7-Rec vector with Herring Testes Carrier DNA using homologous recombination method. The ligation mixture was transformed into competent yeast AH109 cells to construct the primary cDNA library. Eventually, a high qualitative library was successfully established according to an evaluation on quality. The transformation efficiency was about $6.39{\times}10^5$ transformants/$3{\mu}g$ pGADT7-Rec. The titer of the primary cDNA library was $2.5{\times}10^8cfu/mL$. The numbers for the cDNA library was $2.46{\times}10^5$. Randomly picked clones show that the recombination rate was 88.24%. Gel electrophoresis results indicated that the fragments ranged from 0.4 kb to 3.0 kb. Melanin synthesis protein Brn1 (1,3,8-hydroxynaphthalene reductase) was used as a "bait" to test the sufficiency of the Y2H library. As a result, a cDNA clone encoding VelB protein that was known to be involved in the regulation of diverse cellular processes, including control of secondary metabolism containing melanin and toxin production in many filamentous fungi was identified. Further study on the exact role of the VelB gene is underway.

• Analytical Science and Technology
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.98-107
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• 2020

Methamphetamine (MA) is currently the most abused illicit drug in Korea. MA is produced by chemical synthesis, and the final target drug that is produced contains small amounts of the precursor chemicals, intermediates, and by-products. To identify and quantify these trace compounds in MA seizures, a practical and feasible approach for conducting chromatographic fingerprinting with a suite of traditional chemometric methods and recently introduced machine learning approaches was examined. This was achieved using gas chromatography (GC) coupled with a flame ionization detector (FID) and mass spectrometry (MS). Following appropriate examination of all the peaks in 71 samples, 166 impurities were selected as the characteristic components. Unsupervised (principal component analysis (PCA), hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), and K-means clustering) and supervised (partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), orthogonal partial least squares-discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA), support vector machines (SVM), and deep neural network (DNN) with Keras) chemometric techniques were employed for classifying the 71 MA seizures. The results of the PCA, HCA, K-means clustering, PLS-DA, OPLS-DA, SVM, and DNN methods for quality evaluation were in good agreement. However, the tested MA seizures possessed distinct features, such as chirality, cutting agents, and boiling points. The study indicated that the established qualitative and semi-quantitative methods will be practical and useful analytical tools for characterizing trace compounds in illicit MA seizures. Moreover, they will provide a statistical basis for identifying the synthesis route, sources of supply, trafficking routes, and connections between seizures, which will support drug law enforcement agencies in their effort to eliminate organized MA crime.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.24 no.12
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• pp.1269-1275
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• 2014

TALEN is a newly developed gene engineering method to knock out specific genes. It contains a DNA binding domain and a Fok1 nuclease domain in the TALEN plasmid. Therefore, the engineered TALEN construct can bind to any region of genomic DNA and cut the target nucleotide, thereby inducing mutation. In this study, we constructed two TALEN constructs targeted to a protein initiation codon (DBEX2) or the 25th upstream region (DBPR25) to enable mRNA synthesis of SETDB1 HMTase. We performed the TALEN cloning in two steps. The first step was from module vectors to pFUS array vectors. We confirmed successful cloning with a colony PCR experiment and Esp31 restriction enzyme digestion, which resulted in a smear band and a 1 Kb insert band, respectively The second step of the cloning was from a pFUS array vector to a mammalian TALEN expression vector. The engineered TALEN construct was sequenced with specific primers in an expression vector. As expected, a specific array from the module vectors was shown in the sequencing analysis. The specific module sequences were regularly arrayed in every 100 bp, and SETDB1 expression totally disappeared in the TALEN-DBEX2 transfection. PCR amplification targeting of DBEX2 was performed, and the PCR product was digested with a T7E1 restriction enzyme. The expression of SETDB1 was down-regulated in the TALEN-DBPR25 transfection. Morphological changes were also observed in the two TALEN constructs with transfected HeLa cells. These results suggest that the engineered TALEN constructs in two strategic approaches are very useful to knock-out of the SETDB1 gene and to study gene function.

• Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases
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• v.44 no.6
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• pp.1271-1284
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• 1997

Background : Tumor necrosis factor(TNF) has been considered as an important candidate for cancer gene therapy based on its potent anti-tumor activity. However, since the efficiency of current techniques of gene transfer is not satisfactory, the majority of current protocols is aiming the in vitro gene transfer to cancer cells and re-introducing genetically modified cancer cells to host. In the previous study, it was shown that TNF-sensitive cancer cells transfected with TNF-$\alpha$ cDNA would become highly resistant to TNF, and the probability was shown that the acquired resistance to TNF might be associated with synthesis of some protective protein. Understanding the mechanisms of TNF-resistance in TNF-$\alpha$ cDNA transfected cancer cells would be an important step for improving the efficacy of cancer gene therapy as well as for better understandings of tumor biology. This study was designed to evaluate whether the levels of TNF receptor mRNA expression and soluble TNF receptor release from cancer cells are changed after TNF-$\alpha$ cDNA transfection. Method : We transfected TNF-$\alpha$ c-DNA to WEHI164(murine fibrosarcoma cell line), NCI-H2058(human mesothelioma cell line), A549(human non-small cell lung cancer cell line), ME180(human cervix cancer cell line) cells using retroviral vector(pLT12SN(TNF)) and confirm the expression of TNF with PCR, EUSA, MTT assay. Then we determined the TNF resistance of TNF-$\alpha$ cDNA transfected cells(WEHI164-TNF, NCIH2058-TNF, A549-TNF, ME180-TNF) and evaluated the TNF receptor mRNA expression with Northern blot analysis and soluble TNF receptor release with EUSA. Results : The TNF receptor mRNA expressions of parental cells and genetically modified cells were not significantly different. The soluble TNF receptor levels of media from genetically modified cells were lower than those from parental cells. Conclusion : The acquired resistance to TNF after TNF-$\alpha$ cDNA transfection may not be associated with the change in the TNF receptor and the soluble TNF receptor expression.

• The Journal of Korean Society of Virology
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.183-193
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• 1999

Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) envelope glycoprotein is synthesized as a 160 KDa precursor, gp160, that is cleaved by a cellular protease to form the gp120 and gp41 subunits. Mammalian expression vectors were designed that are capable of efficient expression of various mutant envelope glycoproteins derived from a molecular clone of HIV-1. To construct these vectors, one type of mutation was made at the gp120-gp41 cleavage site by oligonucleotide-directed mutagenesis. And another mutation was made to change amino acids in the membrane spanning region of HIV-1 gp41 important for membrane anchorage. Next, these two mutations were combined to generate a vector to have double mutations in cleavage site and membrane-spanning region. These mutants were transiently expressed in mammalian cells. The effect of these mutations on envelope glycoprotein synthesis, proteolytic processing and secretion was determined. In addition, cell surface expression and ability of the glycoprotein to induce syncytium formation were examined. This study provides a mammalian expression system that is capable of efficient expression and secretion of soluble gp160.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.115-133
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• 2010

A modal filter is a tool used to extract the modal coordinates of each individual mode from a system's output. This is achieved by mapping the response vector from the physical space to the modal space. It decomposes the system's responses into modal coordinates, and thus, on the output of the filter, the frequency response with only one peak corresponding to the natural frequency to which the filter was tuned can be obtained. As was shown in the paper (Deraemecker and Preumont 2006), structural modification (e.g. a drop in stiffness or mass due to damage) causes the appearance of spurious peaks on the output of the modal filter. A modal filter is, therefore, a great indicator of damage detection, with such advantages as low computational effort due to data reduction, ease of automation and lack of sensitivity to environmental changes. This paper presents the application of modal filters for the detection of stiffness changes. Two experiments were conducted: the first one using the simulation data obtained from the numerical 7DOF model, and the second one on the experimental data from a laboratory stand in 4 states of damage.