• Korean Journal of Microbiology
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.90-100
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• 1985

The present study was designed to investigate cellular regulation of phosphate metabolism between catabolically repressed and derepressed states in yeast (Saccharomyces uvarum). The activities of various phospatases and the contents of phosphate compounds were detected according to the culture phase and various phosphate concentrations. As the results, Saccharomyces uvarum derepressed many phosphate metabolizing enzymes such as alkaline phosphatase, acid phosphatase and ATPase more than ten fold simultaneously during catabolic repression (phospgate and sugar starvation). At the same state, the amounts of orthophosphate, nucleotidic labile phosphate and acid soluble polypgosphate were increased, compared to basal levels of normally cultivated cells. $Mg^{++}-stimulated$ type among all phospatases was appeared to have most of the enzyme activity. It could be postulated that $K^+ -stimulated$ alkaline phosphatase was directly or indirectly correlated with the synthesis of acid insoluble polyphosphate $Mg^{++}-stimulated$ phosphatase with the degradation of polyphosphates. In case of cultivation in the medium supplemented with sugar and phosphate (catabolic derepression), phospgatase activities except for alkaline phosphatase were decreased rapidly through the progressive batch culture, After 12 hrs culture, at early exponential phase, the cellular accumulation of acid insoluble polyphosphate increased about 5 fold, compared to those of the starved cells. Under catabolic repression, it could be postulated that intracellular phosphate metabolism was regulated by derepressions of phosphatases. The function of polyphosphate system was shown to compensate the ATP/ADP system as phosphate donor and energy source especially during catabolic repression.

• Toxicological Research
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.127-133
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• 2007

Metformin is a drug used to lower blood sugar levels in patients with type 2 diabetes via activation of adenosine monophosphate (AMP)-activated protein kinase (AMPK). The primary objective of this study was to investigate whether metformin at the pharmacologically effective concentrations affects the expressions of ${\gamma}$-glutamylcysteine synthetase and phase II antioxidant genes in the H4IIE cell. Treatment of the cells with either metformin or 5-aminoimidazole-4-carboxamide riboside (AICAR) abrogated tert-butylhydroxyquinone (t-BHQ) induction of ${\gamma}$-glutamylcysteine synthetase, a rate limiting enzyme of GSH synthesis. The ability of t-BHQ to induce glutathione S-transferases (GSTs), a major class of phase II detoxifying enzymes that playa critical role in protecting cells from oxidative stress or electrophiles, was also inhibited by the agents. Transcriptional gene repression by metformin was verified by the GSTA2 promoter luciferase assay. Moreover, either metformin or AICAR treatment significantly decreased t-BHQ-dependent induction of other GSTs (i.e., $GST{\mu}$ and $GST{\pi}$ forms). Taken together, our data indicate that metformin treatment may result in the repression of ${\gamma}$-glutamylcysteine synthetase and glutathione S-transferase genes possibly via AMPK activation.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.17 no.10
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• pp.1727-1732
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• 2007

Phenylacetic acid (PAA) is produced by many bacteria as an antifungal agent and also appears to be an environmentally toxic chemical. The object of this study was to detect PAA using Pseudomonas putida harboring a reporter plasmid that has a PAA-inducible promoter fused to a green fluorescent protein (GFP) gene. Pseudomonas putida KT2440 was used to construct a green fluorescent protein-based reporter fusion using the paaA promoter region to detect the presence of PAA. The reporter strain exhibited a high level of gfp expression in minimal medium containing PAA; however, the level of GFP expression diminished when glucose was added to the medium, whereas other carbon sources, such as succinate and pyruvate, showed no catabolic repression. Interestingly, overexpression of a paaF gene encoding PAA-CoA ligase minimized catabolic repression. The reporter strain could also successfully detect PAA produced by other PAA-producing bacteria. This GFP-based bioreporter provides a useful tool for detecting bacteria producing PAA.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.14-20
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• 1998

Syntheses of the B. stearothermophilus xylanolytic enzymes such as xylanases, ${\beta}$-xylosidases, ${\alpha}$-arabinofurano-sidases, and esterases, were observed to be regulated by the carbon source present in the culture media. Xylan induced synthesis of ${\beta}$-xylosidase at the highest level while xylose gave about 30% of the ${\beta}$-xylosidase activity induced by xylan. The lowest syntheses of the xylanolytic enzymes above mentioned were detected in the basal medium containing glucose as a sole carbon source. When a mixture of xylan and glucose was used as a carbon source, we could observe glucose repression of xylanase (about 70-fold) and ${\beta}$-xylosidase (about 40-fold) syntheses. Whereas, the level of the glucose repression of the expression of the xylA gene encoding the major ${\beta}$-xylosidase of B. stearothermophilus was assessed to be about l0-fold when the relative amounts of the xylA transcript were determined. From the sequence of the xylA gene, we could find two CRE-like sequences (CRE-l: nucleotides ＋124 to ＋136 and CRE-2:＋247 to ＋259) within the reading frame of the xylA gene, either or both of which were suspected to be involved in catabolite repression of the xylA gene.

• Molecules and Cells
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.576-582
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• 2008

Nervous system development takes place after positional information has been established along the dorsal-ventral (D/V) axis. The initial subdivision provided by a gradient of nuclear dorsal protein is maintained by the zygotic genes expressed along the D/V axis. In this study, an investigation was conducted to determine the range of Dpp function in repressing the expression of eagle (eg) that is present in intermediate neuroblasts defective (ind) and muscle specific homeobox (msh) gene domain. eg is expressed in neuroblast (NB) 2-4, 3-3 and 6-4 of the msh domain, and NB7-3 of the ind domain at the embryonic stage 11. In decapentaplegic (dpp) loss-of-function mutant embryos, eg was ectopically expressed in the dorsal region, while in dpp gain-of-function mutants produced by sog or sca-GAL4/UAS-dpp, eg was repressed by Dpp. It is worthy of note that Dpp produced from sim;;dpp embryos showed that Dpp could function at long range. However, Dpp produced from en-GAL4/UAS-dpp or wg-GAL4/UAS-dpp primarily acted at short-range. This result demonstrated that this discrepancy seems to be due to the repression of Dpp to EGFR signaling in sim;;dpp embryos. Taken together, these results suggest that Dpp signaling works at short-range, but can function indirectly at long-range by way of repression of EGFR signaling during embryonic neurogenesis.

• Interdisciplinary Bio Central
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.8.1-8.6
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• 2011

Background: Thanks to the development of the mathematical/statistical reverse engineering and the high-throughput measuring biotechnology, lots of biologically meaningful genegene interaction networks have been revealed. Steady-state analysis of these systems provides an important clue to understand and to predict the systematic behaviours of the biological system. However, modeling such a complex and large-scale system is one of the challenging difficulties in systems biology. Results: We introduce a new stochastic modeling approach that can describe gene regulatory mechanisms by dividing two (DNA and protein) layers. Simple queuing system is employed to explain the DNA layer and the protein layer is modeled using G-networks which enable us to account for the post-translational protein interactions. Our method is applied to a transcription repression system and an active protein degradation system. The steady-state results suggest that the active protein degradation system is more sensitive but the transcription repression system might be more reliable than the transcription repression system. Conclusions: Our two layer stochastic model successfully describes the long-run behaviour of gene regulatory networks which consist of various mRNA/protein processes. The analytic solution of the G-networks enables us to extend our model to a large-scale system. A more reliable modeling approach could be achieved by cooperating with a real experimental study in synthetic biology.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.373-378
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• 2004

The regulatory mechanism of methionine biosynthesis in Corynebacterium glutamicum was analyzed at the protein arid gene expression level. O-Acetylhomoserine sulfhydraylase (encoded by metY) was inhibited by 10 mM methionine to a residual activity of 10% level, whereas no such inhibition was found with cystathionine $\gamma$-synthase (encoded by metB) and cystathionine $\beta$-lyase (encoded by metC). The enzymatic activity of homoserine acetyltransferase (encoded by metX) was repressed to a residual activity of 25% level by 10 mM methionine which was added to the growth medium. Cystathionine $\gamma$-synthase and cystathionine $\beta$-lyase were also repressed by 10 mM methionine, but only to a residual activity of 50-70% level. O-Acetylhomoserine sulfhydrylase was very sensitive to repression by 10 mM methionine, showing residual activity of 13%. In addition, homoserine acetyltransferase was also repressed by 10 mM cysteine to 50% of its original activity. No repression of the enzymes by S-adenosyl methionine was observed. The pattern of repression by methionine indicated that the metB and aecD genes might be regulated by a common mechanism, while the metA and metY genes are differently regulated.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.158-162
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• 1995

The effect of carbon and nitrogen sources on the production of novel aminopeptidase M inhibitors MR-387A and B by Streptomyces sp. SL-387 has been studied. High D-glucose and ammonia concentrations (5$\%$ and 1$\%$, respectively) exerted a negative influence on the inhibitor formation. The suppressive effect of glucose on the inhibitor formation is probably caused by an effect of medium pH rather than that of cyclic AMP. To establish the optimum conditions for inhibitor overproduction, various nitrogen sources and ammonium ion-trapping agents were examined. The use of ammonia slow-releasing nitrogen sources such as soybean meal and fish meal, or ammonium ion-trapping agents such as kaoline, celite, and natural zeolite achieved the enhancement of inhibitor production. These results also indicate that inhibitor formation is affected by ammonium ion repression.

• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.213-217
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• 1995

The effect of inorganic phosphate on the fermentative production of aminopeptidase M inhibitors MR-387A and B by Streptomyces sp. SL-387 has been studied. With inorganic phosphate concentrations higher than 0.78 mM, an inverse correlation was found between the maximum inhibitor production and the initial phosphate concentration added. Growth sensitivity of this actinomycete to arsenate, a phosphate analogue, and the use of magnesium carbonate, a phosphate-trapping agent, suggested that the inhibitor formation was under phosphate repression. Exogenous ATP further increased the degree of phosphate interference in both phosphate-repressed and non repressed culture conditions. The use of a phosphate analogue and a protein synthesis inhibitor also suggested that the phosphate itself repressed inhibitor formation.

• BMB Reports
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.127-132
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• 2019

Cells must fine-tune their gene expression programs for optimal cellular activities in their natural growth conditions. Transcriptional memory, a unique transcriptional response, plays a pivotal role in faster reactivation of genes upon environmental changes, and is facilitated if genes were previously in an active state. Hyper-activation of gene expression by transcriptional memory is critical for cellular differentiation, development, and adaptation. TREM (Transcriptional REpression Memory), a distinct type of transcriptional memory, promoting hyper-repression of unnecessary genes, upon environmental changes has been recently reported. These two transcriptional responses may optimize specific gene expression patterns, in rapidly changing environments. Emerging evidence suggests that they are also critical for immune responses. In addition to memory B and T cells, innate immune cells are transcriptionally hyperactivated by restimulation, with the same or different pathogens known as trained immunity. In this review, we briefly summarize recent progress in chromatin-based regulation of transcriptional memory, and its potential role in immune responses.