• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.43-49
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• 2012

This paper describes the categorical effects of pitch accent contrasts in a mimicry task. It focuses, specifically, on examining how fundamental frequency (f0) variation reflects phonological contrasts from speakers of two distinct varieties of Korean (i.e., North Kyungsang and South Cholla). The results showed that, in a mimicry task using synthetic speech continua, there was a categorical effect in f0 peak timing for North Kyungsang speakers, but the timing of f0 peaks and valleys in the responses of South Cholla speakers was more variable, presenting a gradient or non-categorical effect. Evidence of categorical effects was represented as the shift of f0 peak times along an acoustic continuum for North Kyungsang speakers. The range for the shift of f0 valley times was much narrower, compared to that of f0 peak times. The degree of a shift near the middle of the continuum showed variability across individual mimicry responses. However, the categorical structure in mimicry responses regarding the clustering of f0 peak points was more significant for North Kyungsang speakers than for South Cholla speakers. Additionally, the finding of the current study implies that the location of f0 peak times depends on individuals' imitative (or cognitive) abilities.

• International Journal of Oral Biology
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.211-217
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• 2020

Molecular mimicry is the most common mechanism that breaches self-tolerance. We previously identified autoantibodies to aquaporin-5 (AQP5) in the sera of patients with Sjögren's syndrome and found that the aquaporin of Prevotella melaninogenica (PmAqp), an oral commensal, is highly homologous to human AQP5. This study aimed to test whether PmAqp can induce anti-AQP5 autoantibodies via molecular mimicry. From the amino acid sequence of PmAqp, an immunizing peptide; i.e., PmE-L, was designed, which contained both the B cell epitope "E" and T cell epitope. C57BL/6 and BALB/c mice were subcutaneously immunized with linear or cyclic forms of PmE-L emulsified in incomplete Freund's adjuvant. The concentrations of the antibodies in sera were measured using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. Both linear and cyclic PmE-L induced high levels of antibodies against not only the immunized peptides but also autoantibodies against AQP5E and antibodies against PmE, a Pm homolog of AQP5E. In C57BL/6 mice; however, the cyclic form of PmE-L was more efficient than the linear form in inducing autoantibodies against AQP5E that contained a cyclic epitope. The levels of anti-PmE antibodies and anti-AQP5E autoantibodies showed a strong positive correlation (r = 0.95, p < 0.0005), suggesting molecular mimicry. Collectively, the mice produced anti-AQP5E autoantibodies in response to a PmAqp-derived peptide. This model proved to be useful for studying the mechanisms of autoantibody production by molecular mimicry.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Applied Microbiology Conference
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• 2001.06a
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• pp.83-89
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• 2001

Recent advances in the structural and molecular biology uncovered that a set of translation factors resembles a tRNA shape and, in one case, even mimics a tRNA function for deciphering the genetic ：ode. Nature must have evolved this 'art' of molecular mimicry between protein and ribonucleic acid using different protein architectures to fulfill the requirement of a ribosome 'machine'. Termination of protein synthesis takes place on the ribosomes as a response to a stop, rather than a sense, codon in the 'decoding' site (A site). Translation termination requires two classes of polypeptide release factors (RFs)： a class-I factor, codon-specific RFs (RFI and RF2 in prokaryotes; eRFI in eukaryotes), and a class-IT factor, non-specific RFs (RF3 in prokaryotes; eRF3 in eukaryotes) that bind guanine nucleotides and stimulate class-I RF activity. The underlying mechanism for translation termination represents a long-standing coding problem of considerable interest since it entails protein-RNA recognition instead of the well-understood codon-anticodon pairing during the mRNA-tRNA interaction. Molecular mimicry between protein and nucleic acid is a novel concept in biology, proposed in 1995 from three crystallographic discoveries, one, on protein-RNA mimicry, and the other two, on protein-DNA mimicry. Nyborg, Clark and colleagues have first described this concept when they solved the crystal structure of elongation factor EF- Tu：GTP：aminoacyl-tRNA ternary complex and found its overall structural similarity with another elongation factor EF-G including the resemblance of part of EF-G to the anticodon stem of tRNA (Nissen et al. 1995). Protein mimicry of DNA has been shown in the crystal structure of the uracil-DNA glycosylase-uracil glycosylase inhibitor protein complex (Mol et al. 1995; Savva and Pear 1995) as well as in the NMR structure of transcription factor TBP-TA $F_{II}$ 230 complex (Liu et al. 1998). Consistent with this discovery, functional mimicry of a major autoantigenic epitope of the human insulin receptor by RNA has been suggested (Doudna et al. 1995) but its nature of mimic is. still largely unknown. The milestone of functional mimicry between protein and nucleic acid has been achieved by the discovery of 'peptide anticodon' that deciphers stop codons in mRNA (Ito et al. 2000). It is surprising that it took 4 decades since the discovery of the genetic code to figure out the basic mechanisms behind the deciphering of its 64 codons.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.42 no.6
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• pp.897-908
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• 2018

This study investigates the effect of mimicry buying on differentiation behavior in the context of fashion product consumption. Merging insights from social identity theory, optimal distinctiveness theory and previous research on narcissism, this article presents ingroup-outgroup categorization, narcissistic tendency and social status to serve as boundary conditions of this effect. Experiment 1 supports the hypothesis that more differentiation behavior against mimicry buying is reinforced when the mimicker is an in-group member compared to an out-group member. Based on this result, we conducted Experiment 2 to understand the effect of narcissistic tendency and mimicker's social status on differentiation behavior in the in-group context. The results show that the effect of narcissistic tendency on differentiation behavior is mediated by a perceived distinctiveness threat when the mimicker is an in-group member. In addition, this mediating effect is moderated by the mimicker's social status. Narcissistic tendencies have a direct negative effect on differentiation behavior when the mimicker is an in-group member with a high social status. However, high narcissistic tendency induces a more distinctiveness threat when the mimicker is an in-group member with a low social status. This then results in a greater differentiation behavior. Implications for marketers and suggestions for future research are also discussed.

• IMMUNE NETWORK
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.7-13
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• 2014

Molecular mimicry is an attractive mechanism for triggering autoimmunity. In this review, we explore the potential role of evolutionary conserved bacterial proteins in the production of autoantibodies with focus on granulomatosis with polyangiitis (GPA) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Seven autoantigens characterized in GPA and RA were BLASTed against a bacterial protein database. Of the seven autoantigens, proteinase 3, type II collagen, binding immunoglobulin protein, glucose-6-phosphate isomerase, ${\alpha}$-enolase, and heterogeneous nuclear ribonuclear protein have well-conserved bacterial orthologs. Importantly, those bacterial orthologs are also found in human-associated bacteria. The wide distribution of the highly conserved stress proteins or enzymes among the members of the normal flora and common infectious microorganisms raises a new question on how cross-reactive autoantibodies are not produced during the immune response to these bacteria in most healthy people. Understanding the mechanisms that deselect auto-reactive B cell clones during the germinal center reaction to homologous foreign antigens may provide a novel strategy to treat autoimmune diseases.

• Proceedings of the Microbiological Society of Korea Conference
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• 1999.04a
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• pp.38-42
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• 1999

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.29-36
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• 2010

The purposes of this study are (1) to see if language transfer effect is found in Korean speakers' pronunciation of English stops and to correct them and (2) to investigate the effectiveness of mimicry training and Speech Analyzer training on subjects' pronunciation of English stops. For these purposes, 20 Korean speakers' VOT values of English stops were measured using Speech Analyzer and their post-training production was compared with their pre-training production. The result shows that Korean speakers have no difficulty in correcting pronunciation errors of English voiceless stops and voiced stops and such a result indicates that language transfer effect is not noticed as expected. In addition, the result of pronunciation training shows that the training using Speech Analyzer is more effective than mimicry training.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.531-535
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• 2015

Vasculogenic mimicry (VM) refers to the unique ability of highly aggressive tumor cells to mimic the pattern of embryonic vasculogenesis, which was associated with invasion and metastasis. The grape seed proanthocyanidins (GSPs) had attracted much attention as a potential bioactive anti-carcinogenic agent. However, GSPs regulation of VM and its possible mechanisms in a triple-negative breast cancer cells (TNBCs) remain not clear. Therefore, we examined the effect of GSPs on VM information in HCC1937 cell model. In this study, we identified the VM structure via the three-dimensional (3D) matrix in vitro. Cell viability was measured using the CCK8 assay. The effects of GSPs on human triple-negative breast cancer cells (TNBCs) HCC1937 in terms of related proteins of VM information were determined using western blot analysis. In vitro, the tubular networks were found in highly invasive HCC1937 cells but not in the non-invasive MCF-7 cells when plated on matrigel. The number of vascular channels was significantly reduced when cells were exposed in GSPs ($100{\mu}g$/ml) and GSPs ($200{\mu}g/mL$) groups (all p<0.001). Furthermore, we found that treatment with GSPs promoted transition of the mesenchymal state to the epithelial state in HCC1937 cells as well as reducing the expression of Twist1 protein, a master EMT regulator.GSPs has the ability to inhibit VM information by the suppression of Twist1 protein that could be related to the reversal of epithelial-to-mesenchymal (EMT) process. It is firstly concluded that GSPs may be an p otential anti-VM botanical agent for human TNBCs.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.204-214
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• 2011

This article attenpts to analyze, from the perspective of post-colonialism, 'Goemul'(English title, The Host), the Korean blockbuster movie that scored the greatest box-office success in the history of the Korean cinema. As Goemul eagerly copies the monster movie, a representative genre of Hollywood movies, it has close affinity with Hollywood blockbuster movie in many repects. At the same time, however, it also contains a resistance discourse that criticizes and mocks colonial of Korean society under American influences. This movie successfully carries out a post-colonial cultural translation that transforms mimicry into resistance to colonialsim. Hence, this artcle focuses on how Goemul borrows many aspects of the Hollywood monster movie but goes beyond the simple copying of it to reach post-colonial signification subverting the existing cultural regime.

• BMB Reports
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• v.53 no.6
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• pp.291-298
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• 2020

Tumor angiogenesis is an essential process for growth and metastasis of cancer cells as it supplies tumors with oxygen and nutrients. During tumor angiogenesis, many pro-angiogenic factors are secreted by tumor cells to induce their own vascularization via activation of pre-existing host endothelium. However, accumulating evidence suggests that vasculogenic mimicry (VM) is a key alternative mechanism for tumor vascularization when tumors are faced with insufficient supply of oxygen and nutrients. VM is a tumor vascularization mechanism in which tumors create a blood supply system, in contrast to tumor angiogenesis mechanisms that depend on pre-existing host endothelium. VM is closely associated with tumor progression and poor prognosis in many cancers. Therefore, inhibition of VM may be a promising therapeutic strategy and may overcome the limitations of anti-angiogenesis therapy for cancer patients. In this review, we provide an overview of the current anti-angiogenic therapies for ovarian cancer and the current state of knowledge regarding the links between microRNAs and the VM process, with a focus on the mechanism that regulates associated signaling pathways in ovarian cancer. Moreover, we discuss the potential for VM as a therapeutic strategy against ovarian cancer.