• Journal of Society of Preventive Korean Medicine
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.1-19
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• 2011

Toxicokinetics of Korean Traditional Medicines(TKM) is the description of what rate TKM will enter the body and what happens to it once it is in the body in terms of toxicology. However, it is not easy to understand TKM toxicokinetics because of various factors such as a mixture of 2-30 kinds of herbal materials containing thousands of chemicals, and complex chemical properties. For these reasons, little is known about toxicokinetics of TKM. This study was aimed to characterize and review the absorption, distribution and metabolism of korean traditional medicines in a view of toxicokinetics. For this aim, some of korean traditional medicines were reviewed on a basis of drug-drug interaction, biotransformation and intestinal metabolisms by bacteria. As the factors affecting mainly on toxicokinetics of TKM, individual herbal material's degree of lipophilicity and metabolic rate, and decoction components according to different kinds of herbal materials were considered. Other factors such as intestinal pH and bacterial activity for metabolism affecting on TKM toxicokinetics, especially in small intestine. It would be a better way for improving the adverse or poor effects caused by TCM if the factors affecting on toxicokinetics of TKM is considered.

• Toxicological Research
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.215-226
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• 2002

Acute or repeated physical exercise affects a large number of physiological parameters including hemodynamics, respiration, pH, temperature, gastrointestinal function and biotransformation, which determine the pharmacokinetics of drugs and chemicals. The rate and the amount of a chemical reaching the active site are altered by physical exercise, which results in significant changes in pharmacolosical/toxicological activity of the chemical. This aspect of physical exercise has vast implication in therapeutics and in safety evaluation, particularly for chemicals that have a low margin of safety. However there appears to be a wide inter- and intraindividual variation in the effects of physical exercise depend-ing on the duration, intensity and type of exercise, and also on the properties of each chemical. It is suggested that more studies need to be done to determine which factor(s) plays a major role in the disposition of chemicals in human/animals performing physical exercise. Certain chemicals induce severe toxicity due to metabolic conversion to reactive intermediate metabolites. it is suggested that repeated exercise may enhance the free radical scavenging system by increasing the activity of antioxidant enzymes. This area of research remain to be explored to elucidate the interaction of exercise and chemical on the antioxidant system.

• The Journal of Internal Korean Medicine
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.141-145
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• 2002

Diabetic Ketoacidosis(DKA), one of acute complications of diabetes mellitus(DM) occurs mostly in insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) patients. Its clinical symptoms are hyperglycemia, ketonemia or ketonuria, metabolic acidosis, etc. The interaction of lack of insulin, excessive secretion of insulin antagonic hormone and dehydration cause body fluid loss and electrolyte, typical symptom of DKA as polyuria, polydipsia, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain occur. As a result, prompt supply of fluid and insulin by intravenous injection should be conducted for treatment. It is still an emergent disorder whose mortality is still 10 to 15%, though is has decreased compared to the past. We treated a female patient who has DKA, had withdrawn insulin pump therapy. We report a case of DKA with a brief review of related literatures.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Applied Pharmacology
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• 2008.04a
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• pp.89-99
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• 2008

GPCRs are large families of cell surface receptors that transmit signals through conformational changes upon ligand activation and an interaction with the heterotrimeric G-proteins. GPCRs regulate the cell-signaling pathways and participate in the regulation of physiological processes through the G-proteins defined by their ${\alpha}$ subunits. A family of 20 G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) that provide a large class of tractable drug targets for new anti-inflammatory drugs and, in certain instances, for the treatment of the inflammatory indications such as atherosclerosis, rhinitis, asthma, pulmonary disease and arthritis. In view of the important findings showing that $G{\alpha}_{12}/G{\alpha}_{13}$ regulate the various cellular processes such as actin-stress fiber formation, neurite retraction, platelet aggregation, gene induction, and apoptosis, we became interested in whether, after coupling to the activated GPCRs, the G-proteins and their downstream molecules might be involved in the pathologic processes of chronic inflammatory diseases (e.g., liver fibrosis). In this symposium, the possible link of the G-proteins with the pathophysiology will be discussed with the aim of finding potential new drug targets.

• Proceedings of the Zoological Society Korea Conference
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• 1995.10b
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• pp.82-82
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• 1995

Regulation of enzyme synthesis by transcriptional and translational control systems provides rather stable adaptation to change of amino acid level in the growth medium, while manipulation of enzyme activity through endproduct feedback inhibition represents rather short-term and reversible ways of adjusting metabolic fluctuation of amino acid level. Various control mechanisms interplay to regulate genes encoding enzymes for amino acid biosynthesis in the yeast, Sacchromyces cerevisiae. When amino acids are in short supply, genes under a cross-pathway regulatory mechanism Or general amino acid control (general control) increase their action, in which Gcn4p is the major positive regulator of gene expression. When cells are cultured in minimal medium, basal level expression is also regulated by supplementary control elements, where inorganic phosphate level is additionally involved. Most of amino acid biosynthetic genes are also regulated by the level of endproduct of the pathway. This pathway-specific regulatory mechanism is called specific amino acid control (specific controD, under which gene expression is reduced when endproduct is present in the medium. Derepression of a gene through general control can be usually overridden by repression through specific control, where the endproduct level of that particular pathway is high and not limiting. In this presentation, regulatory factors for basal level expression and general control of yeast amino acid biosynthesis will be discussed, m addition to pathway-specific repression patterns and interaction between CrOSS- and specific-control mechanisms. Preliminary results are also presented from the investigation of the cloned genes in the threonine biosynthetic pathway of the yeast. yeast.

• BMB Reports
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• v.47 no.7
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• pp.361-368
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• 2014

Lipid components in biological membranes are essential for maintaining cellular function. Phosphoinositides, the phosphorylated derivatives of phosphatidylinositol (PI), regulate many critical cell processes involving membrane signaling, trafficking, and reorganization. Multiple metabolic pathways including phosphoinositide kinases and phosphatases and phospholipases tightly control spatio-temporal concentration of membrane phosphoinositides. Metabolizing enzymes responsible for PI 4,5-bisphosphate (PI(4,5)P2) production or degradation play a regulatory role in Toll-like receptor (TLR) signaling and trafficking. These enzymes include PI 4-phosphate 5-kinase, phosphatase and tensin homolog, PI 3-kinase, and phospholipase C. PI(4,5)P2 mediates the interaction with target cytosolic proteins to induce their membrane translocation, regulate vesicular trafficking, and serve as a precursor for other signaling lipids. TLR activation is important for the innate immune response and is implicated in diverse pathophysiological disorders. TLR signaling is controlled by specific interactions with distinct signaling and sorting adaptors. Importantly, TLR signaling machinery is differentially formed depending on a specific membrane compartment during signaling cascades. Although detailed mechanisms remain to be fully clarified, phosphoinositide metabolism is promising for a better understanding of such spatio-temporal regulation of TLR signaling and trafficking.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.401-407
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• 2014

Quorum sensing and the stringent response are well-known regulation systems for the expression of virulence genes in enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC). However, how these two systems interact is not well known. E. coli strains with mutations in two regulation systems, ${\Delta}luxS$ (ECM101) and ${\Delta}luxS{\Delta}relA{\Delta}spoT$ (ECM201), and the ${\Delta}luxS$ complement strain to ECM201 (ECM202) were created from EHEC O157:H7 EDL933 to investigate how the regulatory systems interact. The phenotypic changes of the mutant strains were characterized and compared with the wild type. The mutant strains exhibited no obvious growth defects, although acid resistance and cellular cytotoxicity were decreased significantly in all the mutant strains. Phenotypic characterization revealed that mutations in the stringent response system (ECM201 and ECM202) influenced the metabolic (defective utilization of arabinose and L-sorbose) and enzymatic activities (decreased trypsin activity, and increased ${\alpha}$-glucosidase activity). In contrast, the quorum sensing system mutant (ECM101) did not display these phenotypes. The motility of the quorum sensing system mutant (ECM101) was unchanged, but mutation in the stringent response system influenced the motility. Our results suggest that quorum sensing interacts with the stringent response regulation system.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.55 no.1
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• pp.1-9
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• 2022

In the past few decades, great progress has been made on understanding the interaction between nutrition and health status. But despite this wealth of knowledge, health problems related to nutrition continue to increase. This leads us to postulate that the continuing trend may result from a lack of consideration for intra-individual biological variation on dietary responses. Precision nutrition utilizes personal information such as age, gender, lifestyle, diet intake, environmental exposure, genetic variants, microbiome, and epigenetics to provide better dietary advices and interventions. Recent technological advances in the artificial intelligence, big data analytics, cloud computing, and machine learning, have made it possible to process data on a scale and in ways that were previously impossible. A big data platform is built by collecting numerous parameters such as meal features, medical metadata, lifestyle variation, genome diversity and microbiome composition. Sophisticated techniques based on machine learning algorithm can be used to integrate and interpret multiple factors and provide dietary guidance at a personalized or stratified level. The development of a suitable machine learning algorithm would make it possible to suggest a personalized diet or functional food based on analysis of intra-individual metabolic variation. This novel precision nutrition might become one of the most exciting and promising approaches of improving health conditions, especially in the context of non-communicable disease prevention.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.32 no.12
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• pp.1497-1505
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• 2022

Recently, the concept of personalized nutrition has been developed, which states that food components do not always lead to the same metabolic responses, but vary from person to person. Although this concept has been studied based on individual genetic backgrounds, researchers have recently explored its potential role in the gut microbiome. The gut microbiota physiologically communicates with humans by forming a bidirectional relationship with the micronutrients, macronutrients, and phytochemicals consumed by the host. Furthermore, the gut microbiota can vary from person to person and can be easily shifted by diet. Therefore, several recent studies have reported the application of personalized nutrition to intestinal microflora. This review provides an overview of the interaction of diet with the gut microbiome and the latest evidence in understanding the inter-individual differences in dietary responsiveness according to individual baseline gut microbiota and microbiome-associated dietary intervention in diseases. The diversity of the gut microbiota and the presence of specific microorganisms can be attributed to physiological differences following dietary intervention. The difference in individual responsiveness based on the gut microbiota has the potential to become an important research approach for personalized nutrition and health management, although further well-designed large-scale studies are warranted.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.33 no.10
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• pp.1268-1280
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• 2023

Echinacoside (ECH) is a naturally occurring phenylethanoid glycoside, isolated from Echinacea angustifolia, and this study aimed to analyze its effect on thermogenesis and its interaction with dopaminergic receptors 1 and 5 (DRD1 and DRD5) in 3T3-L1 white adipocytes and mice models. We employed RT-PCR, immunoblot, immunofluorescence, a staining method, and an assay kit to determine its impact. ECH showed a substantial increase in browning signals in vitro and a decrease in adipogenic signals in vivo. Additionally, analysis of the iWAT showed that the key genes involved in beiging, mitochondrial biogenesis, and ATP-dependent thermogenesis were upregulated while adipogenesis and lipogenesis genes were downregulated. OXPHOS complexes, Ca²⁺ signaling proteins as well as intracellular Ca²⁺ levelswere also upregulated in 3T3-L1 adipocytes following ECH treatment. This was collectively explained by mechanistic studies which showed that ECH mediated the beiging process via the DRD1/5-cAMP-PKA and subsequent downstream molecules, whereas it co-mediated the α1-AR-signaling thermogenesis via the DRD1/5/SERCA2b/RyR2/CKmt pathway in 3T3-L1 adipocytes. Animal experiments revealed that there was a 12.28% reduction in body weight gain after the ECH treatment for six weeks. The effects of ECH treatment on adipose tissue can offer more insights into the treatment of obesity and metabolic syndrome.