• The Korean Journal of Community Living Science
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.111-120
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• 2005

Recently, the number of elderly people in the rural area of Korea has increased remarkably and their food security has become deteriorated mainly due to the low economic status. To investigate the food security for the elderly people, relevant data were obtained by offering questionnaire to the rural elderly people who were engaging in traditional agricultural production for daily foods. The subjects of 1870 were collected in 9 provinces according to PPS(Probability Proportional to Size). Questionnaire contained the items of dietary habit, food cultivation, Production and Preservation, and the suey was conducted by trained interviewers. SAS (ver 8.1) was used for statistical analyses in which Chi-square tests and General Linear Models were made. Family of the elderly people was $45.4\%$ of the total and the characteristics of elderly families were that age of male head was 82.1 years and that of female was 67.7 years, and that $68.8\%$ of elderly women were working for family income or pocket money. The elderly families' food cultivation state was surveyed and they were pepper$(59.1\%)$, chinese cabbage$(61.91\%)$, and sesame$(48.6\%)$ for their own consumption. But, bean sprout$(6.5\%)$, tofu$(7.7\%)$ and egg$(5.1\%)$ showed low rate of cultivation for the family. The rate of cultivating chinese cabbage$(61.9\%)$, and sesame$(48.6\%)$ was significantly higher than that of middle aged family. At the status of fermented food production for the elderly family, Doenjang$(87.4\%)$ and Gochujang$(86.3\%)$ Kanjang$(84.0\%)$ Kimchi$(92.9\%)$ Jangachi$(27.6\%)$ and Meju$(91.61\%)$maintained higher rate than that of middle aged families' Food preservation of elderly families was low and there are just jam$(5.3\%)$ and bottled products$(1.4\%)$. A little higher rate was observed lot the preserved food such as alcohol$(9.9\%)$ and powder$(9.8\%)$. For the elderly family the score of food cultivation was 4.08/12 points and that of food preservation was 0.62/12 points. The score of fermented food production for elderly family was 10.24/12 points which was significantly different from that of middle aged family (9.58/12 points, p<0.001). This result suggests that for the elderly people food with more protein is needed for production.

• Korean Journal of Microbiology
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.142-148
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• 2006

In order to develop chitosanase for the production of chitosan oligosaccharides, a chitosanase-producing bacterium was isolated from the traditional fermented soybean, Meju, and identified as Bacillus amyloliquefaciene MJ-1. The cloned chitosanase gene, 825 bp in size, encoded a single peptide of 274 amino acids with a estimated molecular mass of 30.9 kDa. The deduced amino acid sequence showed significant homology with microbial chitosanases. The recombinant chitosanase was expressed in Escherichia coli upon induction with isopropyl-D-thiogalactopyranoside, and purified using $Ni^{2+}-NTA$ agarose column chromatography. The maximal activity of the recombinant chitosanase is at pH 5.0 and $60^{\circ}C$. The recombinant chitosanase is stable between pH 5.0 and pH 7.0 at $37^{\circ}C$ for 30 min, and more than 75% of the activity still remain at $80^{\circ}C$ for 30 min incubation.

• Journal of Life Science
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.481-489
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• 2023

The taste and quality of soy sauce, a fermented liquid condiment, is greatly influenced by microbial metabolism during fermentation. To investigate the microbiological characteristics of ganjang during the initial fermentation process, we prepared meju (fermented soybean) blocks fermented with starter cultures and solar salts and analyzed the microbial community quantitively using 16S rRNA gene profiling from ganjang that had been fermented over a five-week period. The ganjang samples were collected and analyzed after soaking for week one (1W), three (3W), and five (5W) weeks. We found that Halomonadaceae was significantly higher in the 1W group (89.83%) than the 3W and 5W groups (14.46%, and 13.78%, respectively). At a species level, Chromohalobacter beijerinckii and Chromohalobacter canadensis were the dominant species in the 1W group but several taxa such as Bacillus subtilis, Pediococcus acidilactici, and Enterococcus faecalis were more abundant in the 3W and 5W groups. Pearson correlation analysis of the relative abundance of the bacteria showed a negative correlation between Chromohalobacter and two bacterial genera Bacillus and Enterococcus. Beta-diversity showed a statistical distinction between the 1W and the 3W and 5W groups, while no significance was evident between the 3W and 5W groups. Linear discriminant effect size analysis was used to identify biomarkers and significant differences in the relative abundance of several halophilic bacteria, Bacillus sp. and lactic acid bacteria at 1W, 3W, and 5W, recpectively, which indicates the important role of the bacterial community at these time points.