• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.121-129
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• 2023

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that affects millions of people worldwide. The conventional treatment model for PD have harmful side effects, such as dyskinesia, hallucinations, nausea, and fatigue, and are expensive. As a result, natural products derived from medicinal herbs, fruits, and vegetables have emerged as potential therapeutic strategies for PD. These natural products have been traditionally used to treat various diseases and have been shown to possess anti-oxidative and anti-inflammatory properties, as well as inhibitory roles in protein misfolding, mitochondrial homeostasis, neuroinflammation and other neuroprotective processes. In addition, they have fewer side effects and are generally less expensive than conventional drugs. It also discusses the limitations of current treatments and the potential of natural remedies derived from plants to treat PD in new ways or as supplements to existing treatments. The multifunctional mechanisms of medicinal plants that may be utilized to treat PD are also discussed, including the modulation of neurotransmitter systems, the enhancement of neurotrophic factors, and the inhibition of apoptosis. While more research is needed to fully understand their mechanisms of action and efficacy, natural products have the potential to provide safer and more effective treatment options for patients with PD.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.51 no.4
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• pp.457-464
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• 2023

Proteolytic enzymes produced by filamentous fungi can degrade various fibrous and globular proteins along with other metabolites that may also find application in biotechnology. In this study, the effect of proteolytic enzymes of 22 Aspergillus strains on various proteins was investigated using protein-containing diagnostic media. Subsequently, a new parameter estimating secreted proteinases specificity towards fibrous or globular proteins without its advanced biochemical research - index of severity of proteolytic action (ISPA) - was suggested. This index determines mycozymes specificity in following manner: its value increases with greater affinity to fibrous proteins, decreases if there is higher affinity to globular proteins. ISPA value was the lowest (0.52) for Aspergillus domesticus, indicating the highest specificity to globular proteins, the highest one (1.26) for A. glaucus, whose proteinases best hydrolyzed fibrous proteins. However, the highest overall proteolytic potential was observed for Aspergillus melleus. The ability to produce acid, alkali and extracellular pigments was evaluated for all isolated strains as well.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.83-89
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• 1981

Several kinds of organic acids, alcohols, aromatic compounds and sugars as carbon sources were tested in order to produce the cell mass of Rhizopus oryzae which is used in part of food processing or organic acid fermentation. Sodium acetate among them was good enough for carbon source as well as glucose under the concentration of one percent. All nitrogenous substances tested such as ammonium, nitrate or organic nitrogen compounds were well used by this strain of Rhizopus oryzae as nitrogen source. Ammonium sulfate among inorganic nitrogen compounds was most utilized as a nitrogen source in glucose or acetate medium. This strain did not require any growth factors such as yeast extract. The following composition of medium was therefore determined in order to produce the cell mass of Rhizopus oryzae: Na-acetate 1 %, (NH$_4$)$_2$SO$_4$ 0.2%, $K_2$HPO$_4$ 0.05%, MgSO$_4$.7$H_2O$ 0.01%, NaCl 0.01% (PH 5.5). The cell wall of mycelium grown in above medium was lysed optimally at pH 6.5 and 5$0^{\circ}C$ by the action of Strepzyme 115-5. On producing protoplast from mycelium by enzymatic action, almost all of the mycelium was damaged after 4hrs of treatment.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.185-190
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• 1981

1. $\alpha$-amylase from B. circulans F-2 was purified with specific activity 55.0 u/mg. protein (about 23 times of the original specific activity) and the yield of 25.5%, by means of corn starch absorption, salting out with ammonium sulfate (80% saturation), gel filtration on Bio-Gel P-100 and DE-32 column chromatography. 2 The purified enzyme showed two closely migrated protin bands on polyacrylamide disc gel electrophoresis, both of which have amylase activity judging from the activity staining of the gel. On SDS-polyacrylamide disc gel electrophoresis, however, the purified enzyme showed a single band suggesting that those two bands are the charge isomers of an amlyase having the slightly different charge. 3. Plot of log mobility of two bands versus polyacrylamide gel concentration according to Hedrick and Smith gave the parallel lines indicating them to be charge isomers. 4. To confirm the action pattern of two enzyme protein bands, each band was separated and was eluted from the gel and eluates were incubated with soluble starch. Oligosaccharide pattern produced by each eluate was examined by paper chromatography. The eluates of two bands showed the same action pattern. 5. The maltohexaose was the only hydrolysis product of soluble starch in the early stage of hydrolysis.

• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.514-528
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• 2004

An emotion-based video scene retrieval algorithm is proposed in this paper. First, abrupt/gradual shot boundaries are detected in the video clip representing a specific story Then, five video features such as 'average color histogram' 'average brightness', 'average edge histogram', 'average shot duration', and 'gradual change rate' are extracted from each of the videos and mapping between these features and the emotional space that user has in mind is achieved by an interactive genetic algorithm. Once the proposed algorithm has selected videos that contain the corresponding emotion from initial population of videos, feature vectors from the selected videos are regarded as chromosomes and a genetic crossover is applied over them. Next, new chromosomes after crossover and feature vectors in the database videos are compared based on the similarity function to obtain the most similar videos as solutions of the next generation. By iterating above procedures, new population of videos that user has in mind are retrieved. In order to show the validity of the proposed method, six example categories such as 'action', 'excitement', 'suspense', 'quietness', 'relaxation', 'happiness' are used as emotions for experiments. Over 300 commercial videos, retrieval results show 70% effectiveness in average.

• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.17-24
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• 2017

Estrogens are effective neuroprotectants in vivo and in vitro. To obtain a better insight into the molecular mechanisms of action of neuroprotection by $17{\beta}-estradiol$ (E2), we examined the differential effects of E2 on the fluidity of synaptosomal plasma membrane vesicles (SPMV) isolated from rat cerebral cortex. Intramolecular excimerization of 1,3-di(1-pyrenyl)-propane (Py-3-Py) was used to investigate the effects of E2 on the bulk and annular lateral diffusion of the SPMV. In addition, we examined the effects of E2 on the rotational diffusion of individual leaflet of SPMV exploiting selective quenching of outer monolayer 1,6-diphenyl-1,3,5-hexatriene (DPH) fluorescence by trinitrophenyl groups. The $F{\ddot{o}}rster$ distance $R_0$ value for the tryptophan-Py-3-Py donor-acceptor pair was $26.9{\AA}$. E2 increased the lateral mobility of both bulk and annular lipids in SPMV in a dose-dependent manner, but a larger effect on bulk lipids was observed. Although E2 decreased the anisotropy of DPH in SPMV, E2 had a greater fluidizing effect on the outer leaflet compared to the inner leaflet. These results suggest that E2 selectively fluidizes the more fluid regions within SPMV. It is highly probable that E2 mostly fluidizes the bulk lipids, away from either annular lipids or lipid rafts, in the outer leaflet of SPMV. This selective fluidization may be one of the nongenomic mechanisms of neuroprotection by E2.

• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.8-16
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• 2017

p-Coumaric acid is an organic compound that is a hydroxyl derivative of cinnamic acid. Due to its multiple biological activities p-coumaric acid has been widely studied in biochemical and cellular systems and is also considered as a useful therapeutic candidate for various neuronal diseases. However, the efficacy of p-coumaric acid on zebrafish developmental regulation has not been fully explored. In this study, therefore, we first investigated the action mechanism of the p-coumaric acid on the zebrafish development in a whole-organism model. p-Coumaric acid treated group significantly inhibited the pigmentation of the developing zebrafish embryos compared with control embryos without any severe side effects. In addition, p-coumaric acid down-regulated more effectively in a lower concentration than the well-known zebrafish's melanogenic inhibitor, phenylthiourea. We also compared the molecular docking property of p-coumaric acid with phenylthiourea on the tyrosinase's kojic acid binding site, which is the key enzyme of zebrafish embryo pigmentation. Interestingly, p-coumaric acid interacted with higher numbers of the amino acid residues and exhibited a tight binding affinity to the enzyme than phenylthiourea. Taken all together, these results strongly suggest that p-coumaric acid inhibits the activity of tyrosinase, consequently down-regulating zebrafish embryo pigmentation, and might play an important role in the reduction of dermal pigmentation. Thus, p-coumaric acid can be an effective and non-toxic ingredient for anti-melanogenesis functional materials.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.213-220
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• 1998

An ATP regeneration system was used for the production of glutathione which was synthesized by a sequential action of ${\gamma}$-glutamyl-cysteine synthetase and glutathione synthetase. The synthetases above were produced in the recombinant E. coli (TG1/pDG7) with the highest specific production yield of 31 mg glutathione/g wet cell. Bakers yeast was considered to have economically a better ATP regeneration system although the glutathione production yield was lower than that of acetate kinase. It was also observed that the ATP regeneration system of bakers yeast was superior to that of Saccharomyces cerevisiae ATCC24858. The yield of glutathione production with bakers yeast was 36% with the ATP concentration of 5 mM. To avoid the cysteine limitation during the early phase of glutatione production, an extra cysteine was added at 2 hours after reaction and the production yield increased 1.91 times. The effectiveness of bakers yeast as an ATP regeneration system was proved by several sets of extra feeding experiments. The product inhibition by glutathione above 14 mM was also observed.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.1-8
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• 1978

In order to develop the processes for the production of fermented feed from cellulosic agricultural by-product, cereal straw, by th action of cellulolytic fungus, the properties of the cellulolytic enzyme produced by Trichoderma sp. KI 7-2 was studied. A higher enzyme activity was obtained in the culture added by 1％ rice or barley straw powder than in the culture of pure cellulose. The crude enzyme was prepared by precipitating from 20∼60％ saturated ammonium sulphate of the culture supernatant. The optimum conditions for the enzyme reaction were temperature of of 50$^{\circ}C$ and pH 4.2. The crude enzyme was static at 50$^{\circ}C$ for two hours and at pH between 4 and 6. These properties were adopted for the fermented feed production, and several production. Thus, several processes of semisolid culture were devicced to up grade tile fermented feed and to develop into the acceptable quality.

• Microbiology and Biotechnology Letters
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.141-147
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• 1979

Naringinase from Atpergillus nidulans was immobillized on DEAE-Sephadex A-25 and its characteristics were studied. The optimal conditions for the preparation of the immobilized enzyme were as follow; optimal pH, incubation time and the suitable amount of enzyme were 6.0, 30 min. and 110 units per gram of the dried ion exchage resin, respectively. The optimal pH of the immobilized enzyme was higher than that of the native enzyme. The optimal temperature increased from 4$0^{\circ}C$ to 5$0^{\circ}C$. The heat and pH stability of the immobillized enzyme were better than those of the native enzyme. No significant difference in the Michaelis constant was detected. Activation energy of the immobilized enzyme was 7.96 Kcal/mole, and the apparent Michaelis rate equation was used to describe the action of this material. The degree of hydrolysis was dependant on the flow rate at low rate of perfusion through the column. As the flow rate increased, the value of the apparent Km decreased.