• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.767-777
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• 2012

Annular Biofilm Reactor (ABR) equipped with coupons of three different pipe materials (STS 304, PVC, PE) was used to generate drinking water biofilm samples. The level of assimilable organic carbon (AOC) during the sample generation period was $37.3{\mu}g/L$, and this level did not seem to be low enough to limit the formation of biofilm in this study. Terminal-restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) analyses determined T-RF profile as early as 3 h of exposure on PVC coupons. Average surface roughness ($R_a$) measured by atomic force microscopic analyses was 125.7 nm for PVC, and this value was higher than for STS (71.6 nm) and PE (74.0 nm). However, biofilm formation was faster on STS (6 h) than on PE (12 h), which indicated that surface roughness might not be the only factor that controlled the initiation of biofilm development. Upon detection of the T-RF peaks, richness (S) and diversity indices such as Shannon (H) and Simpson (1/D) demonstrated a rather slow increase until 48 h followed by rapid increase regardless of the pipe materials. Differences of microbial community structures among the biofilm samples were determined based on the cluster analysis using Jaccard coefficients (Sj). Biofilm communities could be divided into two distinct groups according to the exposure time regardless of the pipe materials. First group contained a young (< 48 h) biofilm samples (10 out of 11) but second group contained a mature (${\geq}$ 48 h) samples (11 out of 14). Results suggested that, due to the complexity of biofilm, the targeting of the first group of cluster was crucial for optimizing the management of drinking water distribution systems and controlling microbial growth.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.332-339
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• 2015

Nitrogen removal is one of the most important issues about wastewater treatment because nitrogen is a primary pollutant caused various problems such as eutrophication. We developed a CANON microbial community by using AOB and ANAMMOX bacteria as seeding sources. When 100 mg-N/L of influent ammonium was supplied, the DO above 0.4 mg/L showed a very low TN removal efficiency while the DO of 0.3 mg/L showed TN removal efficiency as high as 71.3%. When the influent ammonium concentration was reduced to 50 mg/L, TN removal efficiency drastically deceased. However, TN removal efficiency was recovered to above 70% after 14 day operation when the influent nitrogen concentration was changed again from 50 mg-N/L to 100 mg-N/L. According to the operating temperature from $37{\pm}1^{\circ}C$ to $20{\pm}1^{\circ}C$, TN removal efficiency also rapidly decreased but gradually increased again up to $70.0{\pm}2.6$%. The analysis of PCR-DGGE showed no substantial difference in microbial community structures under different operational conditions. This suggests that if CANON sludge is once successfully developed from a mixture of AOB and ANAMMOX bacteria, the microbial community can be stably maintained regardless of the changes in operational conditions.

• Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.829-835
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• 2012

The cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops has increased due to their economic and agronomic advantages. Before commercialization of GM crops, however, we must assess the potential risks of GM crops on human health and environment. The aim of this study was to investigate the possible impact of Bt rice on the soil microbial community. Microbial communities were isolated from the rhizosphere soil cultivated with Bt rice and Nakdong, parental cultivar and were subjected to be analyzed using both culture-dependent and molecular methods. The total counts of bacteria, fungi, and actinomycetes in the rhizosphere of transgenic and conventional rice were not significantly different. Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) analysis of PCR-amplified 16S rRNA genes revealed that the bacterial community structures during cultural periods were very similar each other. Analysis of dominant isolates in the rhizosphere cultivated with Bt and Nakdong rice showed that the dominant isolates from the soil of Bt rice and Nakdong belonged to the Proteobacteria, Cloroflexi, Actinobacteria, Firmicutes, and Acidobacteria. These results indicate that the Bt rice has no significant impact on the soil microbial communities during cultivation period. Further study remains to be investigated whether the residue of Bt rice effect on the soil environment.

• The Plant Pathology Journal
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.521-532
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• 2021

Knowledge and better understanding of functions of the microbial community are pivotal for crop management. This study was conducted to study bacterial structures including Acidovorax species community structures and diversity from the watermelon cultivated soils in different regions of South Korea. In this study, soil samples were collected from watermelon cultivation areas from various places of South Korea and microbiome analysis was performed to analyze bacterial communities including Acidovorax species community. Next generation sequencing (NGS) was performed by extracting genomic DNA from 92 soil samples from 8 different provinces using a fast genomic DNA extraction kit. NGS data analysis results revealed that, total, 39,367 operational taxonomic unit (OTU), were obtained. NGS data results revealed that, most dominant phylum in all the soil samples was Proteobacteria (37.3%). In addition, most abundant genus was Acidobacterium (1.8%) in all the samples. In order to analyze species diversity among the collected soil samples, OTUs, community diversity, and Shannon index were measured. Shannon (9.297) and inverse Simpson (0.996) were found to have the highest diversity scores in the greenhouse soil sample of Gyeonggi-do province (GG4). Results from NGS sequencing suggest that, most of the soil samples consists of similar trend of bacterial community and diversity. Environmental factors play a key role in shaping the bacterial community and diversity. In order to address this statement, further correlation analysis between soil physical and chemical parameters with dominant bacterial community will be carried out to observe their interactions.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.29 no.10
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• pp.1624-1628
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• 2019

Banana planting altered microbial communities and induced the enrichment of Fusarium oxysporum in rhizosphere compared with that of forest soil. Diseased plant rhizosphere soil (WR) harbored increased pathogen abundance and showed distinct microbial structures from healthy plant rhizosphere soil (HR). The enriched taxon of Bordetella and key taxon of Chaetomium together with some other taxa showed negative associations with pathogen in HR, indicating their importance in pathogen inhibition. Furthermore, a more stable microbiota was observed in HR than in WR. Taken together, the lower pathogen abundance, specific beneficial microbial taxa and stable microbiota contributed to disease suppression.

• Korean Journal of Environmental Agriculture
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.197-204
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• 2019

BACKGROUND: Living modified microorganisms (LMMs) have been focused in two very different aspects of positive and negative effects on ecology and human health. As a model experiment, wild type and a foreign origin gene-harboring modified E. coli strains were subjected to comparison of their metabolomes and potential effects on soil microbiota in the laboratory sets. This study assumes the unintentional release of LMMs and tries to suggest potential effects on the soil microbiota even at minimal settings. METHODS AND RESULTS: Metabolomes from the wild type and LM E. coli were analyzed by NMR and the profiles were compared. In the laboratory soil experiments, the two types of E. coli were added to the soils and monitored for the bacterial community compositions. Those metabolomic profiles did not show significant differences. The microbial community structures from the time series soil DNAs for both the sets using wild type and LMO also did not indicate significant changes, but minor by the addition of foreign organisms regardless of wild or LMO. CONCLUSION: Even if the recombinant microorganism (LMO) is released into the soil environment, the survival of microorganisms in the environment would be one of the major factors for the transfers of foreign genes to other organisms and diffusion into the soil environment.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.26 no.7
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• pp.1320-1332
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• 2016

Light hydrocarbons accumulated in subsurface soil by long-term microseepage could favor the anomalous growth of indigenous hydrocarbon-oxidizing microorganisms, which could be crucial indicators of underlying petroleum reservoirs. Here, Illumina MiSeq sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene was conducted to determine the bacterial community structures in soil samples collected from three typical oil and gas fields at different locations in China. Incubation with n-butane at the laboratory scale was performed to confirm the presence of "universal microbes" in light-hydrocarbon microseepage ecosystems. The results indicated significantly higher bacterial diversity in next-to-well samples compared with background samples at two of the three sites, which were notably different to oil-contaminated environments. Variation partitioning analysis showed that the bacterial community structures above the oil and gas fields at the scale of the present study were shaped mainly by environmental parameters, and geographic location was able to explain only 7.05% of the variation independently. The linear discriminant analysis effect size method revealed that the oil and gas fields significantly favored the growth of Mycobacterium, Flavobacterium, and Pseudomonas, as well as other related bacteria. The relative abundance of Mycobacterium and Pseudomonas increased notably after n-butane cultivation, which highlighted their potential as biomarkers of underlying oil deposits. This work contributes to a broader perspective on the bacterial community structures shaped by long-term light-hydrocarbon microseepage and proposes relatively universal indicators, providing an additional resource for the improvement of microbial prospecting of oil and gas.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Bioinformatics Conference
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• 2000.11a
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• pp.17-20
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• 2000

Structural genomics aims to provide a good experimental structure or computational model of every tractable protein in a complete genome. Underlying this goal is the immense value of protein structure, especially in permitting recognition of distant evolutionary relationships for proteins whose sequence analysis has failed to find any significant homolog. A considerable fraction of the genes in all sequenced genomes have no known function, and structure determination provides a direct means of revealing homology that may be used to infer their putative molecular function. The solved structures will be similarly useful for elucidating the biochemical or biophysical role of proteins that have been previously ascribed only phenotypic functions. More generally, knowledge of an increasingly complete repertoire of protein structures will aid structure prediction methods, improve understanding of protein structure, and ultimately lend insight into molecular interactions and pathways. We use computational methods to select families whose structures cannot be predicted and which are likely to be amenable to experimental characterization. Methods to be employed included modern sequence analysis and clustering algorithms. A critical component is consultation of the presage database for structural genomics, which records the community's experimental work underway and computational predictions. The protein families are ranked according to several criteria including taxonomic diversity and known functional information. Individual proteins, often homologs from hyperthermophiles, are selected from these families as targets for structure determination. The solved structures are examined for structural similarity to other proteins of known structure. Homologous proteins in sequence databases are computationally modeled, to provide a resource of protein structure models complementing the experimentally solved protein structures.

• The Plant Pathology Journal
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.397-408
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• 2023

Fire blight disease, caused by Erwinia amylovora, is a devastating affliction in apple cultivation worldwide. Chemical pesticides have exhibited limited effectiveness in controlling the disease, and biological control options for treating fruit trees are limited. Therefore, a relatively large-scale survey is necessary to develop microbial agents for apple trees. Here we collected healthy apple trees from across the country to identify common and core bacterial taxa. We analyzed the endophytic bacterial communities in leaves and twigs and discovered that the twig bacterial communities were more conserved than those in the leaves, regardless of the origin of the sample. This finding indicates that specific endophytic taxa are consistently present in healthy apple trees and may be involved in vital functions such as disease prevention and growth. Furthermore, we compared the community metabolite pathway expression rates of these endophyte communities with those of E. amylovora infected apple trees and discovered that the endophyte communities in healthy apple trees not only had similar community structures but also similar metabolite pathway expression rates. Additionally, Pseudomonas and Methylobacterium-Methylorobrum were the dominant taxa in all healthy apple trees. Our findings provide valuable insights into the potential roles of endophytes in healthy apple trees and inform the development of strategies for enhancing apple growth and resilience. Moreover, the similarity in cluster structure and pathway analysis between healthy orchards was mutually reinforcing, demonstrating the power of microbiome analysis as a tool for identifying factors that contribute to plant health.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.32 no.12
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• pp.1561-1572
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• 2022

Plastic pollution has been recognized as a serious environmental problem, and microbial degradation of plastics is a potential, environmentally friendly solution to this. Here, we analyzed and compared microbial communities on waste plastic films (WPFs) buried for long periods at four landfill sites with those in nearby soils to identify microbes with the potential to degrade plastics. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy spectra of these WPFs showed that most were polyethylene and had signs of oxidation, such as carbon-carbon double bonds, carbon-oxygen single bonds, or hydrogen-oxygen single bonds, but the presence of carbonyl groups was rare. The species richness and diversity of the bacterial and fungal communities on the films were generally lower than those in nearby soils. Principal coordinate analysis of the bacterial and fungal communities showed that their overall structures were determined by their geographical locations; however, the microbial communities on the films were generally different from those in the soils. For the pulled data from the four landfill sites, the relative abundances of Bradyrhizobiaceae, Pseudarthrobacter, Myxococcales, Sphingomonas, and Spartobacteria were higher on films than in soils at the bacterial genus level. At the species level, operational taxonomic units classified as Bradyrhizobiaceae and Pseudarthrobacter in bacteria and Mortierella in fungi were enriched on the films. PICRUSt analysis showed that the predicted functions related to amino acid and carbohydrate metabolism and xenobiotic degradation were more abundant on films than in soils. These results suggest that specific microbial groups were enriched on the WPFs and may be involved in plastic degradation.