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Genomics Reveals Traces of Fungal Phenylpropanoid-flavonoid Metabolic Pathway in the Filamentous Fungus Aspergillus oryzae

  • Juvvadi Praveen Rao;Seshime Yasuyo;Kitamoto Katsuhiko
    • Journal of Microbiology
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    • v.43 no.6
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    • pp.475-486
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    • 2005
  • Fungal secondary metabolites constitute a wide variety of compounds which either playa vital role in agricultural, pharmaceutical and industrial contexts, or have devastating effects on agriculture, animal and human affairs by virtue of their toxigenicity. Owing to their beneficial and deleterious characteristics, these complex compounds and the genes responsible for their synthesis have been the subjects of extensive investigation by microbiologists and pharmacologists. A majority of the fungal secondary metabolic genes are classified as type I polyketide synthases (PKS) which are often clustered with other secondary metabolism related genes. In this review we discuss on the significance of our recent discovery of chalcone synthase (CHS) genes belonging to the type III PKS superfamily in an industrially important fungus, Aspergillus oryzae. CHS genes are known to playa vital role in the biosynthesis of flavonoids in plants. A comparative genome analyses revealed the unique character of A. oryzae with four CHS-like genes (csyA, csyB, csyC and csyD) amongst other Aspergilli (Aspergillus nidulans and Aspergillus fumigatus) which contained none of the CHS-like genes. Some other fungi such as Neurospora crassa, Fusarium graminearum, Magnaporthe grisea, Podospora anserina and Phanerochaete chrysosporium also contained putative type III PKSs, with a phylogenic distinction from bacteria and plants. The enzymatically active nature of these newly discovered homologues is expected owing to the conservation in the catalytic residues across the different species of plants and fungi, and also by the fact that a majority of these genes (csyA, csyB and csyD) were expressed in A. oryzae. While this finding brings filamentous fungi closer to plants and bacteria which until recently were the only ones considered to possess the type III PKSs, the presence of putative genes encoding other principal enzymes involved in the phenylpropanoid and flavonoid biosynthesis (viz., phenylalanine ammonia-lyase, cinnamic acid hydroxylase and p-coumarate CoA ligase) in the A. oryzae genome undoubtedly prove the extent of its metabolic diversity. Since many of these genes have not been identified earlier, knowledge on their corresponding products or activities remain undeciphered. In future, it is anticipated that these enzymes may be reasonable targets for metabolic engineering in fungi to produce agriculturally and nutritionally important metabolites.

Effects of Unilateral Renal Pedicle or Ureteral Occlusion on the Renal Function in the Rat (수뇨관 결찰이 신장에 미치는 영향)

  • Kim, Shin G.;Cho, Kyung W.
    • The Korean Journal of Physiology
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    • v.19 no.2
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    • pp.173-187
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    • 1985
  • Renal compensatory adaptation caused by ablation of a part of renal mass has long been known in the field of the compensatory renal hypertrophy or hyperplasia. Many reports were found on the chronic mechanisms on the compensatory renal hyperfunction after exclusion of the contralateral kidney. However the mechanism(s) of the acute compensatory hyperfunction after contralateral exclusion has not yet been clarified. In the present experiment, we have tried to prove the possibility of the involvement of the renin-angiotensin system and/or prostaglandin system in the control mechanism of the acute compensatory renal hyperfunction after contralateral kidney exclusion. There were found different responses of the renal hyperfunction by contralateral renal pedicle or ureteral occlusion. Contralateral renal pedicle or ureteral occlusion caused a sustained increases of the urinary volume, sodium and potassium excretion, while the magnitude of the changes was different quantitatively by the maneuvers. Blood collection affected on the acute compensatory renal responses after ureteral as well as renal pedicle occlusion. Plasma prostaglandin $E_2$ level was not changed by the contralateral renal pedicle or ureteral occlusion. Urinary excretion of Prostaglandin $E_2$, the indices of renal prostaglandin biosynthesis, was not changed by the contralateral renal pedicle occlusion, but increased without significance by the contralateral ureteral occlusion. Acute renal compensatory responses after contralateral renal pedicle occlusion were blocked by the pretreatment of indomethacin. Plasma renin activity increased after contralateral ureteral occlusion, but the pattern of the increases was the same as in the time-control group. Plasma renin activity after contralateral renal pedicle occlusion did not change by the time sequence. SQ 20,881, an angiotensin I converting enzyme inhibitor, blunted the contralateral renal responses after the renal pedicle occlusion. Bilateral renal denervation abolished the contralateral renal responses after the renal pedicle occlusion. The above data suggest that there is no direct evidence to support the involvement of the renin-angiotensin system and/or prostaglandin system for the acute compensatory renal hyperfunction after contralateral kidney exclusion, and that the functional changes of the intact kidney may be caused by a humoral substances, or other mechanisms by afferent renal nerve activity originating from the treated kidney.

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An Analog of the Antimicrobial Peptide CopA5 Inhibits Lipopolysaccharide-Induced Macrophage Activation

  • Yoon, I Na;Hong, Ji;Zhang, Peng;Hwang, Jae Sam;Kim, Ho
    • Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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    • v.27 no.2
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    • pp.350-356
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    • 2017
  • We previously reported that the CopA3 peptide (LLCIALRKK, ${\small{D}}-form$) originally isolated from the Korean dung beetle has antimicrobial and immunosuppressive effects. However, the high cost of producing the synthetic peptide, especially the ${\small{D}}-form$, has limited the development of CopA3 for therapeutic purposes. Here, we investigated whether the CopA3 deletion derivative, CopA5, which is composed of only five amino acids (LLCIA) and has the ${\small{L}}-form$ structure, could inhibit the lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced activation of macrophages. Peritoneal exudate macrophages (PEM) were isolated from mice and exposed to LPS in the presence or absence of CopA5, and biomarkers of macrophage activation were measured. Our results revealed that LPS-induced nitric oxide (NO) production, tumor necrosis factor $(TNF)-{\alpha}$ secretion, and phagocytic activity of PEM were significantly inhibited by CopA5 treatment. Similar to CopA3, the structurally modified CopA5 peptide had no cell toxicity (as assessed by measurement of cell viability loss and apoptosis) in PEM. Moreover, the LPS-induced upregulation of the activating phosphorylation of signal transducer and activator of transcription 1 (STAT1) was markedly inhibited by CopA5 treatment. These results suggest that, similar to CopA3, CopA5 inhibits macrophage activation by inhibiting STAT1 phosphorylation and blocking the release of NO and $TNF-{\alpha}$. CopA5 may therefore prove therapeutically useful in the realm of immune suppression.

VARIATION OF UREASE GENES(ureC) FROM Streptococcus salivarius (Streptococcus salivarisu의 요소분해효소 유전자 변이에 관한 연구)

  • Choi, Hye-Jin;Lee, Jin-Yong;Choi, Ho-Young
    • Restorative Dentistry and Endodontics
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    • v.24 no.4
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    • pp.535-545
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    • 1999
  • Crease of Streptococcus salivarius is believed to play a critical role in bacterial ecology and pH homeostasis in the mouth, and consequently affect the pathogenesis of dental caries and periodontal diseases. Expression of the urease gene is greatly enhanced by low p. f. excess of Carbohydrate, and faster growth. It was observed that urease activity of the strains of S. salivarius that exhibited no of low urease activity was not increased even in low pH condition. In this study, it was hypothesized that the urease gene of the strains is absent, defected, or greatly changed by genetic combination. In order to prove this hypothesis, chromosomes were obtained from 28 S. salivarius strains which had been isolated from normal teeth and carious lesions, subjected to polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using primers encoding highly conserved sequence from ureC, and then the obtained PCR products were compared. The results were as follows: 1. After PCR the strains generated either one of 0.54- and 1.3-kbp PCR products, or none. 2. All 16 strains having a higher urease activity(<50${\mu}mol/min/mg$) produced 0.54-kbp PCR products. 3. Twelve strains without urease activity and with a lower urease activity(<50${\mu}mol/min/mg$) yield either one of 0.54 and 1.3-kbp PCR products, or none. 4. The DNA sequence of the 0.54-kbp PCR product (pCAP-0.54) exhibited 95% identity to the ureC of S. salivarus 57.I; 30bp were found to be different, which led to difference of only 2 amino acids in the sequence. 5. The DNA sequence of the 1.3-kbp PCR product(pCAP-1.3) was found to be highly homologous to the aminopeptidase C gene of Streptococcus thermophilus. Overall results indicate that there are considerable variations of the urease genes from S. salivarus strains and the variations may affect the uncolytic activity of the bacteria directly of indirectly.

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Power Saving Mechanisms for LTE Base Stations Using Traffic Characteristic (Traffic 특성을 이용한 LTE 기지국의 Power Saving 메커니즘)

  • Lee, Seung-Hwan;Lee, Seung-Hyong
    • The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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    • v.9 no.1
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    • pp.49-54
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    • 2010
  • 3GPP(Third Generation Partnership Project) LTE system that is the next step forward in cellular 3G services address the issues related to power saving at LTE base station. This is because that most of the energy in a typical telecommunication network is consumed by the wireless network's base station site. Power saving at LTE base station fall in with low-carbon green technology. This thesis proposes a power saving MAC protocol for LTE base station which utilizes different graded DRX/DTX(Discontinuous. Reception/Transmission). Considering traffic type in UE, proposed MAC protocol controls adaptive DRX/DTX cycle. The proposed method is more improve power saving performance than another method which is unchanged DRX/DTX by conditions. In this thesis, I propose an power saving MAC protocol in an environment where LTE base station are communicated with UE and prove improvement in performance through simulations.

Seismic Response Control of Adjacent Structures by Semi-Active Fuzzy Control of Magneto-Rheological Damper (MR 감쇠기의 준능동 퍼지제어기법을 이용한 인접구조물의 지진응답제어)

  • Kim, Min-Seob;Ok, Seung-Yong;Park, Kwan-Soon
    • Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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    • v.13 no.3
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    • pp.39-50
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    • 2009
  • In this paper, a method for reducing seismic responses of adjacent buildings is studied that involves connecting two buildings with energy-dissipating devices, such as MR dampers. For the vibration control of the adjacent buildings, a fuzzy control technique with semi-active MR dampers is proposed. A fuzzy controller, which can appropriately modulate the damping forces by controlling the input voltage in real time, is designed according to the proposed method. To verify the validity of the proposed method, numerical simulations are performed. In the numerical simulations, historical earthquake records with diverse frequency contents and different peak values are used. For the purpose of comparison, an uncontrolled system, a passive control system and a semi-active fuzzy control system are considered. The comparative results prove the effectiveness of the proposed control technique, i.e. the numerical results show that the fuzzy controlled semi-active MR dampers can effectively reduce the earthquake responses of the adjacent structures.

Improving Flash Translation Layer for Hybrid Flash-Disk Storage through Sequential Pattern Mining based 2-Level Prefetching Technique (하이브리드 플래시-디스크 저장장치용 Flash Translation Layer의 성능 개선을 위한 순차패턴 마이닝 기반 2단계 프리패칭 기법)

  • Chang, Jae-Young;Yoon, Un-Keum;Kim, Han-Joon
    • The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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    • v.15 no.4
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    • pp.101-121
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    • 2010
  • This paper presents an intelligent prefetching technique that significantly improves performance of hybrid fash-disk storage, a combination of flash memory and hard disk. Since flash memory embedded in a hybrid device is much faster than hard disk in terms of I/O operations, it can be utilized as a 'cache' space to improve system performance. The basic strategy for prefetching is to utilize sequential pattern mining, with which we can extract the access patterns of objects from historical access sequences. We use two techniques for enhancing the performance of hybrid storage with prefetching. One of them is to modify a FAST algorithm for mapping the flash memory. The other is to extend the unit of prefetching to a block level as well as a file level for effectively utilizing flash memory space. For evaluating the proposed technique, we perform the experiments using the synthetic data and real UCC data, and prove the usability of our technique.

The Size Correction Method of Eyes Region using Morphing (모핑을 이용한 눈 영역 크기 보정 기법)

  • Goo, Eun-jin;Cha, Eui-young
    • Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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    • 2013.10a
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    • pp.83-86
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    • 2013
  • In this paper, by using the Morphing, if the size of the eyes of both sides are not the same, we propose a method to correct the size of eyes area. First, by using the Haar-like feature from a input image that is input, to detect the shape of the eyes and face. After inverting the left and right eye region of one of the shape of the eyes detected sets the correspondence between the second with a line to control the shape of the eyes detected using eyes that is detected with canny edge, in the previous step. To the Warping to match the correspondence was then set in the previous step, an area of each eye. Then, I merge the image which merged in the eye area is detected from the original image. As a result, a system result of the experiment in the test image and face image seen from the front, the proposed, prove to be more efficient than a method of keying the size of the eye only.

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Practical Packaging Technology for Microfluidic Systems (미소유체시스템을 위한 실용적인 패키징 기술)

  • Lee, Hwan-Yong;Han, Song-I;Han, Ki-Ho
    • Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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    • v.34 no.3
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    • pp.251-258
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    • 2010
  • This paper presents the technology for the design, fabrication, and characterization of a microfluidic system interface (MSI); the purpose of this technology is to enable the integration of complex microfluidic systems. The MSI technology can be applied in a simple manner for realizing complex arrangements of microfluidic interconnects, integrated microvalves for fluid control, and optical windows for on-chip optical processes. A microfluidic system for the preparation of genetic samples was used as the test vehicle to prove the effectiveness of the MSI technology for packaging complex microfluidic systems with multiple functionalities. The miniaturized genetic sample preparation system comprised several functional compartments, including compartments for cell purification, cell separation, cell lysis, solid-phase DNA extraction, polymerase chain reaction, and capillary electrophoresis. Additionally, the functional operation of the solid-phase extraction and PCR thermocycling compartments was demonstrated by using the MSI.

The study on history of prescription through comparison Dongyi-Soose-Bowon Chopanbon with Sasang-Yihak-Chobonguen and Dongyi-Soose-Bowon Gapobon (태음인(太陰人) 처방(處方)의 형성과정에 관한 연구(硏究))

  • Park, Seong-Sik;Bae, Hyo-Sang
    • Journal of Sasang Constitutional Medicine
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    • v.13 no.2
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    • pp.110-123
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    • 2001
  • 1. Purpose This study is intended to catch the expasion of theory of Sasang Constitutional Medicine through Dongyi-Soose-Bowon Chopanbon with Sasang-Yihak-Chobonguen and Dongyi-Soose-Bowon Gapobon 2. Method I studied the archive of prescription and medicines concerned in the Dongyi-Soose-Bowon Chopanbon with Sasang-Yihak-Chobonguen and Dongyi-Soose-Bowon Gapobon 3. Result and conclusion 1. The principle which select the Sasang-in Prescription in Dongmuyugo is Hyung-Choei-Eik-Mi(馨臭液味) and Seung-Gang-Gae- Hap(升降開闔) 2. The same Medicine in Dongyi-Soose-Bowon Chopanbon and Sasang-Yihak-Chobonguen and Dongyi-Soose-Bowon Gapobon is 27 and this medicines are the principle medicine in the Taiyin Disease 3. The same Herb-Medication in the Sasang-Yihak-Chobonguen and Dongyi-Soose-Bowon Gapobon is 4 and the concept in the Sasang-Yihak-Chobonguen is succeded to Dongyi-Soose-Bowon Gapobon 4. The same Herb-Medication in the Dongyi-Soose-Bowon Gapobon and Dongyi-Soose-Bowon Chopanbon is 7 and the Change between the Dongyi-Soose-Bowon Gapobon and Dongyi-Soose-Bowon Chopanbon is the cognition between the Pyozeung(表證) and Lizeung(裏證) in the disease 5. There is no same Herb-Medication in that three books. This result can prove that the Dongyi-Soose-Bowon Chopanbon's New Herb-Medication(新定方) was made in the last stage of Sassng-Yihak

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