• Proceedings of the PSK Conference
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• 2002.10a
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• pp.201-205
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• 2002

It is generally accepted that the immune system is one of the major target organs for many toxic chemicals. In addition, many toxic chemicals require metabolic activation by cytochrome P450s for their toxicity. Although the immune cells possess a limited amount of drug metabolizing capacity, metabolic activation of certain toxicants in liver and immune organs may have a significant role in immunosuppression. In the present studies, the possible role of metabolic activation by cytochrome P450s in chemical-induced immunosuppression was reviewed, with a particular emphasis on the methodological techniques to detect immunotoxicants requiring metabolic activation in vivo and in vitro. (omitted)

• The Plant Pathology Journal
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.192-194
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• 2015

Pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) activate mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs), essential components of plant defense signaling. Salicylic acid (SA) is also central to plant resistance responses, but its specific role in regulation of MAPK activation is not completely defined. We have investigated the role of SA in PAMP-triggered MAPKs pathways in Arabidopsis SA-related mutants, specifically in the flg22-triggered activation of MPK3 and MPK6. cim6, sid2, and npr1 mutants exhibited wild-type-like flg22-triggered MAPKs activation, suggesting that impairment of SA signaling has no effect on the flg22-triggered MAPKs activation. Pretreatment with low concentrations of SA enhanced flg22-induced MPK3 and MPK6 activation in all seedlings except npr1, indicating that NPR1 is involved in SA-mediated priming that enhanced flg22-induced MAPKs activation.

• IMMUNE NETWORK
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.424-427
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• 2011

The nucleotide-oligomerization domain (NOD) proteins are members of the NOD-like receptor (NLR) family, which are intracellular and cytoplasmic receptors. We analyzed the role of NODs for cytokine production by macrophages infected with intracellular pathogen M. leprae, the causative agent of leprosy. Production of pro-inflammatory cytokines such as IL-$1{\beta}$ and TNF-${\alpha}$ was inhibited in the presence of cytochalasin D, an agent blocking phagocytosis, suggesting that intracellular signaling was, partially, required for macrophage activation to M. leprae infection. Next, we investigated the role of NOD1 and NOD2 proteins on NF-${\kappa}B$ activation and cytokine expression. Treatment with M. leprae significantly increased NF-${\kappa}B$ activation and expression of TNF-${\alpha}$ and IL-$1{\beta}$ in NOD1- and NOD2-transfected cells. Interestingly, their activation and expression were inhibited by cytochalasin D, suggesting that stimulation of NOD proteins may be associated with the enhancement of cytokine production in host to M. leprae.

• International Journal of Contents
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.18-22
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• 2014

Hidden nodes have a key role in the information processing of feed-forward neural networks in which inputs are processed through a series of weighted sums and nonlinear activation functions. In order to understand the role of hidden nodes, we must analyze the effect of the nonlinear activation functions on the weighted sums to hidden nodes. In this paper, we focus on the effect of nonlinear functions in a viewpoint of information theory. Under the assumption that the nonlinear activation function can be approximated piece-wise linearly, we prove that the entropy of weighted sums to hidden nodes decreases after piece-wise linear functions. Therefore, we argue that the nonlinear activation function decreases the uncertainty among hidden nodes. Furthermore, the more the hidden nodes are saturated, the more the entropy of hidden nodes decreases. Based on this result, we can say that, after successful training of feed-forward neural networks, hidden nodes tend not to be in linear regions but to be in saturated regions of activation function with the effect of uncertainty reduction.

• Toxicological Research
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.189-196
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• 2007

Cytochrome P450 (P450) enzymes are the major catalysts involved in the biotransformation of various drugs, pollutants, carcinogens, and many endogenous compounds. Most of chemical carcinogens are not active by themselves but they require metabolic activation. P450 isozymes playa pivotal role in the metabolic activation. The activation of arylamines and heterocyclic arylamines (HAAs) involves critical N-hydroxylation, usually by P450. CYP1A2 plays an important role in these reactions. Broad exposure to many of these compounds might cause carcinogenicity in animals and humans. On the other hand, P450s can be also involved in the bioactivation of other chemicals including alcohols, aflatoxin B1, acetaminophen, and trichloroethylene, both in humans and in experimental animals. Understanding the P450 metabolic activation of many chemicals is necessary to develop rational strategies for prevention of their toxicities in human health. An important part is the issues of extrapolation between species in predicting risks and variation of P450 enzyme activities in humans.

• Proceedings of the PSK Conference
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• 2003.04a
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• pp.222.1-222.1
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• 2003

The signal transduction pathway leading to the activation of the p70s6k plays an important role in the progression of cells from G0/G1 to S phase of the cell cycle but remains incompletely characterized. We investigated the role of the Rho family G protein Rac1 in H2O2-mediated p70s6k activation. Transient expression of a dominant negative mutants of the small GTP-binding proteins Rac1 (Rac1N17) and Cdc42(Cdc42N17) showed reduced levels of slower migration on Western blots of one-dimensional SDS-PAGE in p70s6k and ERK1/2 by PDFG stimulation. (omitted)

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.1263-1279
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• 2020

Activating appropriate roles for a session in the role-based access control (RBAC) model has become challenging because of the so-called role explosion. In this paper, factors and issues related to user-driven role management are analysed, and a session role activation (SRA) problem based on reasonable assumptions is proposed to describe the problem of such role management. To solve the SRA problem, we propose an extended RBAC model with context-based role filtering. When a session is created, context conditions are used to filter roles that do not need to be activated for the session. This significantly reduces the candidate roles that need to be reviewed by the user, and aids the user in rapidly activating the appropriate roles. Simulations are carried out, and the results show that the extended RBAC model is effective in filtering the roles that are unnecessary for a session by using predefined context conditions. The extended RBAC model is also implemented in the Apache Shiro framework, and the modifications to Shiro are described in detail.

• Carbon letters
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.180-184
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• 2003

The role of KOH in the one-stage KOH-activation of rice straws was studied using FTIR, XPS, TGA, and DTG techniques. It was found that at the impregnation, KOH extracts to some extent the lignin component from rice straw and reacts with hydroxyl groups. On heat-treatment, the impregnated KOH facilitates intermolecular condensation reaction on one hand but retards the thermal degradation of cellulose molecules on the other hand. The oxygen-containing surface functional groups newly created by oxidation of KOH may facilitate the bulk, not controlled, consumption of carbon atoms so that the effective porosities may not be able to be developed by the one-stage activation process.

• Biomedical Science Letters
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.441-446
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• 2005

The molecular mechanism of ischemia/reperfusion injury remains unclear. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are implicated in cell death caused by ischemia/reperfusion in vivo or hypoxia in vitro. Poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) activation has been reported to be involved in hydrogen peroxide-induced cell death in renal epithelial cells. This study was therefore undertaken to evaluate the role of P ARP activation in chemical hypoxia in opossum kidney (OK) cells. Chemical hypoxia was induced by incubating cells with antimycin A, an inhibitor of mitochondrial electron transport. Exposure of OK cells to chemical hypoxia resulted in a time-dependent cell death. In OK cells subjected to chemical hypoxia, the generation of ROS was increased, and this increase was prevented by the $H_2O_2$ scavenger catalase. Chemical hypoxia increased P ARP activity and chemical hypoxia-induced cell death was prevented by the inhibitor of PARP activation 3-aminobenzamide. Catalase prevented OK cell death induced by chemical hypoxia. $H_2O_2$ caused PARP activation and $H_2O_2-induced$ cell death was prevented by 3-aminobenzamide. Taken together, these results indicate that chemical hypoxia-induced cell injury is mediated by PARP activation through H202 generation in renal epithelial cells.

• BMB Reports
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• v.55 no.2
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• pp.57-64
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• 2022

Autoimmune disease is known to be caused by unregulated self-antigen-specific T cells, causing tissue damage. Although antigen specificity is an important mechanism of the adaptive immune system, antigen non-related T cells have been found in the inflamed tissues in various conditions. Bystander T cell activation refers to the activation of T cells without antigen recognition. During an immune response to a pathogen, bystander activation of self-reactive T cells via inflammatory mediators such as cytokines can trigger autoimmune diseases. Other antigen-specific T cells can also be bystander-activated to induce innate immune response resulting in autoimmune disease pathogenesis along with self-antigen-specific T cells. In this review, we summarize previous studies investigating bystander activation of various T cell types (NKT, γδ T cells, MAIT cells, conventional CD4⁺, and CD8⁺ T cells) and discuss the role of innate-like T cell response in autoimmune diseases. In addition, we also review previous findings of bystander T cell function in infection and cancer. A better understanding of bystander-activated T cells versus antigen-stimulated T cells provides a novel insight to control autoimmune disease pathogenesis.