• Journal of the Korean Magnetic Resonance Society
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.54-68
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• 2011

$^1H$ nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy of biological samples has been proven to be an effective and nondestructive approach to probe drug toxicity within an organism. In this study, ketoprofen toxicity was investigated using $^1H$-NMR spectroscopy coupled with multivariate statistical analysis. Histopathologic test of ketoprofen-induced acute gastrointestinal damage in rats demonstrated a significant dose-dependent effect. Furthermore, principal component analysis (PCA) derived from $^1H$-NMR spectra of urinary samples showed clear separation between the vehicle-treated control and ketoprofen-treated groups. Moreover, PCA derived from endogenous metabolite concentrations through targeted profiling revealed a dose-dependent metabolic shift between the vehicle-treated control, low-dose ketoprofen-treated (10 mg/kg body weight), and high-dose ketoprofen-treated (50 mg/kg) groups coinciding with their gastric damage scores after ketoprofen administration. The resultant metabolic profiles demonstrated that the ketoprofen-induced gastric damage exhibited energy metabolism perturbations that increased urinary levels of citrate, cis-aconitate, succinate, and phosphocreatine. In addition, ketoprofen administration induced an enhancement of xenobiotic activity in fatty oxidation, which caused increase levels of N-isovalerylglycine, adipate, phenylacetylglycine, dimethylamine, betaine, hippurate, 3-indoxylsulfate, N,N-dimethylglycine, trimethyl-N-oxide, and glycine. These findings demonstrate that $^1H$-NMR-based urinary metabolic profiling can be used for noninvasive and rapid way to diagnose adverse drug effects and is suitable for explaining the possible biological pathways perturbed by nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug toxicity.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.221-231
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• 2007

Recent researches have shown that important cellular-based autoprotective mechanisms are mediated by heat-shock proteins(HSPs), also called 'molecular chaperones'. HSPs as molecular chaperones are the primary cellular defense mechanism against damage to the proteome, initiating refolding of denatured proteins and regulating degradation after severe protein damage. HSPs also modulate multiple events within apoptotic pathways to help sustain cell survival following damaging stimuli. HSPs are induced by almost every type of stresses including physical and psychological stresses. Our nervous system in the brain are more vulnerable to stress and damage than any other tissues due to HSPs insufficiency. The normal function of HSPs is a key factor for endogenous stress adaptation of neural tissues. HSPs play an important role in the process of neurodevelopment, neurodegeneration, and neuroendocrine regulation. The altered function of HSPs would be associated with the development of several neuropsychiatric disorders. Therefore, an understanding of HSPs activities could help to improve autoprotective mechanism of our neural system. This paper will review the literature related to the significance of HSPs in neuropsychiatric field.

• Journal of Embryo Transfer
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.95-111
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• 2013

Worldwide there is concern about the continuing release of a broad range of environmental endocrine disrupting chemicals, including polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxins, phthalates, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), and other halogenated organochlorines persistent organic pollutants (POPs) into the environment. They are condemned for health adverse effects such as cancer, reproductive defects, neurobehavioral abnormalities, endocrine and immunological toxicity. These effects can be elicited via a number of mechanisms among others include disruption of endocrine system, oxidation stress and epigenetic. However, most of the mechanisms are not clear, thus several number of studies are ongoing trying to elucidate them in order to protect the public by reducing these adverse effects. In this review, we briefly limited review the process, the impacts, and the potential mechanisms of dioxin/dioxin like compound, particularly, their possible roles in adverse developmental and reproductive processes, diseases, and gene expression and associated molecular pathways in cells.

• Applied Biological Chemistry
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 1978

In an effort to elucidate degradation mechanisms of an acetanilide herbicide, Butachlor, by soil microorganisms, a common soil fungus, Chaetomium globosum which is known to be powerful was selected and incubated in a Butachlor-contained medium. The results obtained from the resulting metabolites are as follows: (1) Dechlorination from Butachlor occurred very easily, remaining almost constant after 180 hrs. of incubation. (2) More than 10 metabolites were isolated and characterized, of which the metabolites, m/e 205, 177, 223, 182, and 206 were the main products. (3) In this paper, the structures and pathways of formation of metabolites, m/e 206, 182, 223, 225, and 189 were tentatively proposed.

• Applied Biological Chemistry
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.182-189
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• 1986

Alachlor, 2-chloro-2',6'-diethyl-N-(methoxymethyl) acetanilide produced four major degradation products, when incubated under an upland soil condition for 80 days. They include 8-ethyl-2-hydroxy-N-(methoxymethyl)-1,2,3,4-tetrahydroquinoline (m/z 221), N-hydroxyacetyl-2,3-dihydro-7-ethylindole (m/z 205), 2-hydroxy-2',6'-diethyl-N-(methoxymethyl) acetanilide (m/z 251), and 9-ethyl-1,5-dihydrol-(methoxymethyl)-5-methyl-4,1-benzoxazepin-2 (3H)-one (m/z 249). The products turned out to be a little different from those obtained under the flooded paddy soil condition used in the previous paper. The plausible pathways for the degradation were proposed.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.21 no.8
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• pp.846-853
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• 2011

Glycerol has become an attractive carbon source in the biotechnology industry owing to its low price and reduced state. However, glycerol is rarely used as a carbon source in Saccharomyces cerevisiae because of its low utilization rate. In this study, we used glycerol as a main carbon source in S. cerevisiae to produce 1,2-propanediol. Metabolically engineered S. cerevisiae strains with overexpression of glycerol dissimilation pathway genes, including glycerol kinase (GUT1), glycerol 3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GUT2), glycerol dehydrogenase (gdh), and a glycerol transporter gene (GUP1), showed increased glycerol utilization and growth rate. More significant improvement of glycerol utilization and growth rate was accomplished by introducing 1,2-propanediol pathway genes, mgs (methylglyoxal synthase) and gldA (glycerol dehydrogenase) from Escherichia coli. By engineering both glycerol dissimilation and 1,2-propanediol pathways, the glycerol utilization and growth rate were improved 141% and 77%, respectively, and a 2.19 g 1,2- propanediol/l titer was achieved in 1% (v/v) glycerolcontaining YEPD medium in engineered S. cerevisiae.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.18-23
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• 2016

Depression is a complicated psychiatric illness with severe consequences. Despite recent advanced achievements of molecular neurobiology, pathophysiology of depression has not been well elucidated. Among new findings of pathophysiology of depression, the possible fast antidepressant effect by N-methyl-D-asparate receptor antagonist, such as ketamine, is regarded as a promising treatment target of depression. Ketamine stimulates the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) signaling pathway and activation of mTOR signaling pathway may be a key mechanism of the antidepressant effect of ketamine. Thus, this review describes the role of mTOR signaling in the pathophysiology of depression and developing a new treatment target of depression.

• Molecular & Cellular Toxicology
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.78-86
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• 2005

Dioxins, especially 2, 3, 7, 8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD or dioxin), are ubiquitous environmental contaminants. TCDD is known that it has toxic effects in animals and humans, including chloracne, immune, reproductive and developmental toxicities, carcinogenicity, wasting syndrome and death. TCDD induces a broad spectrum of biological responses, including disruption of normal hormone signaling pathways, reproductive and developmental defects, immunotoxicity, liver damage, wasting syndrome and cancer. Many researches showed that TCDD induces gene expression of transcriptional factors related cell proliferation, signal transduction, immune system and cell cycle arrest at molecular and cellular levels. These toxic actions of TCDD are usually mediated with AhR (receptor, resulted from cell culture, animal and clinical studies). cDNA microarray can be used as a highly sensitive and informative marker for toxicity. Additionally, microarray analysis of dioxin-toxicity is able to provide an opportunity for the development of candidate bridging biomarkers of dioxin-toxicity. Through microarray technology, it is possible to understand the therapeutic effects of agonists within the context of toxic effects, classify new chemicals as to their complete effects on biological systems, and identify environmental factors that may influence safety.

• Biotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering:BBE
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.219-226
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• 2000

The application of recombinant DNA technology to restructure metabolic net-work can change metabolite and protein products by altering the biosynthetic pathways in an organism. Although some success has been achieved, a more detailed and thorough investigation of this approach is certainly warranted since it is clear that such methods hold great potential based on the encouraging results obtained so far. In last decade, there have been tremendous advances in the field of glycobiology and the stage has been set for the biotechnological production of glycoproteins for therapeutic use. Today glycoproteins are one of the most important groups of pharmaceutical products. In this study the attempt was made to focus on identifying technologies that may have general application for modifying glycosylation pathway of the yeast cells in order to produce glycoproteins of therapeutic use. The carbohydrates of therapeutic recombinant glycoproteins play very important roles in determining their pharmacokinetic properties. A number of biological interactions and biological functions mediated by glycans are also being targeted for therapeutic manipulation in vivo. For a commercially viable production of therapeutic glycoproteins a metabolic engineering of a host cell is yet to be established.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.74-80
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• 2004

Aspergillus fumigatus is one of the most common fungi in the human environment, both in-doors and out-doors. It is the main causative agent of invasive aspergillosis, a life-threatening mycosis among immunocompromised patients. The genome has been sequenced by an international consortium, including the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (U.K.) and The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR, U.S.A.), and a ten times whole genome shotgun sequence assembly has been made publicly available. In this study, we identified tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle enzymes of A. fumigatus by comparative analysis with four other fungal species. The open reading frames showed high amino acid sequence similarity with the other fungal citric acid enzymes and well-conserved functional domains. All genes present in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Schizosaccharomyces pombe, Candida albicans, and Neurospora crassa were also found in A. fumigatus. In addition, we identified four A. fumigatus genes coding for enzymes in the glyoxylate shunt, which may be required for fungal virulence. The architecture of multi-gene encoded enzymes, such as isocitrate dehydrogenase, 2-ketoglutarate, succinyl-CoA synthetase, and succinate dehydrogenase was well conserved in A. fumigatus. Furthermore, our results show that genes of A. fumigatus can be detected reliably using GlimmerM.