• Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology
• /
• 제31권12호
• /
• pp.1601-1614
• /
• 2021

To overcome the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, vaccination campaigns are the highest priority of majority of countries. Limited supply and worldwide disproportionate availability issues for the approved vaccines, together with concerns about rare side-effects have recently initiated the switch to heterologous vaccination, commonly known as mixing of vaccines. The COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective in the general population. However, none of the vaccines is 100% efficacious or effective, with variants posing more challenges, resulting in breakthrough cases. This review summarizes the current knowledge of immune responses to variants of concern (VOC) and breakthrough infections. Furthermore, we discuss the scope of heterologous vaccination and future strategies to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic, including fractionation of vaccine doses and alternative route of vaccination.

• IMMUNE NETWORK
• /
• 제21권5호
• /
• pp.32.1-32.14
• /
• 2021

Over two hundred twenty-eight million cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the world have been reported until the 21^st of September 2021 after the first rise in December 2019. The virus caused the disease called severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Over 4 million deaths blame COVID-19 during the last one year and 8 months in the world. Currently, four SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern are mainly focused by pandemic studies with limited experiments to translate the infectivity and pathogenicity of each variant. The SARS-CoV-2 α, β, γ, and δ variant of concern was originated from United Kingdom, South Africa, Brazil/Japan, and India, respectively. The classification of SARS-CoV-2 variant is based on the mutation in spike (S) gene on the envelop of SARS-CoV-2. This review describes four SARS-CoV-2 α, β, γ, and δ variants of concern including SARS-CoV-2 ε, ζ, η, ι, κ, and B.1.617.3 variants of interest and alert. Recently, SARS-CoV-2 δ variant prevails over different countries that have 3 unique mutation sites: E156del/R158G in the N-terminal domain and T478K in a crucial receptor binding domain. A particular mutation in the functional domain of the S gene is probably associated with the infectivity and pathogenesis of the SARS-CoV-2 variant.

• IMMUNE NETWORK
• /
• 제23권2호
• /
• pp.13.1-13.24
• /
• 2023

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is one of the most consequential global health crises in over a century. Since its discovery in 2019, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) continues to mutate into different variants and sublineages, rendering previously potent treatments and vaccines ineffective. With significant strides in clinical and pharmaceutical research, different therapeutic strategies continue to be developed. The currently available treatments can be broadly classified based on their potential targets and molecular mechanisms. Antiviral agents function by disrupting different stages of SARS-CoV-2 infection, while immune-based treatments mainly act on the human inflammatory response responsible for disease severity. In this review, we discuss some of the current treatments for COVID-19, their mode of actions, and their efficacy against variants of concern. This review highlights the need to constantly evaluate COVID-19 treatment strategies to protect high risk populations and fill in the gaps left by vaccination.

• Interdisciplinary Bio Central
• /
• 제3권2호
• /
• pp.6.1-6.3
• /
• 2011

Diabetes Mellitus (DM), often simply referred to as diabetes, has developed into a major health concern affecting more than 200 million people worldwide with approximately 4 million deaths per year attributed to the presence of the disease. Diabetes mellitus is categorized as Type 1 and Type 2, where Type 1 diabetes represents a lack of insulin production, and Type 2 diabetes is characterized by a relative lack of insulin receptor (i.e., decreased sensitivity to the effect of insulin) and cased by a complex interplay between genetic factors and environmental factors. Up to date, various studies on the pathology and mechanism in terms of genetic experiments have been conducted and approximately hundreds of genes were reported as diabetes mellitus associated genes. At this point, to support studies on the cause and mechanism of diabetes mellitus, an efficient database system to provide genetic variants related to diabetes mellitus is needed. DMBase is an integrated web-based genetic information resource for diabetes mellitus designed to service genomic variants, genes, and secondary information derived for diabetes mellitus genetics researchers. The current version of DMBase documents 754 genes with 3056 genetic variants and 66 pathways. It provides many effective search interfaces for retrieving diabetes mellitus and genetic information. A web interface for the DMBase is freely available at http://sysbio.kribb.re.kr/dmBase.

• IMMUNE NETWORK
• /
• 제22권6호
• /
• pp.48.1-48.13
• /
• 2022

With the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants, which are randomly mutated, the dominant strains in regions are changing globally. The development of preclinical animal models is imperative to validate vaccines and therapeutics against SARS-CoV-2 variants. The objective of this study was to develop a non-human primate (NHP) model for SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant infection. Cynomolgus macaques infected with Delta variants showed infectious viruses and viral RNA in the upper (nasal and throat) and lower respiratory (lung) tracts during the acute phase of infection. After 3 days of infection, lesions consistent with diffuse alveolar damage were observed in the lungs. For cellular immune responses, all macaques displayed transient lymphopenia and neutrophilia in the early stages of infection. SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant spike protein-specific IgM, IgG, and IgA levels were significantly increased in the plasma of these animals 14 days after infection. This new NHP Delta variant infection model can be used for comparative analysis of the difference in severity between SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and may be useful in the efficacy evaluation of vaccines and universal therapeutic drugs for mutations.

• 대한임베디드공학회논문지
• /
• 제10권4호
• /
• pp.241-255
• /
• 2015

Recent network environment has been rapidly evolved to cloud computing environment based on the development of the Internet technologies. Furthermore there is an increasing demand on mobile cloud computing due to explosive growth of smart devices and wide deployment of LTE-based cellular networks. Thus mobile Desktop-as-a-Service(DaaS) could be a pervasive service for nomadic users. In addition, video streaming traffic is currently more than two-thirds of mobile traffic and ever increasing. All such trends enable that video streaming in mobile DaaS could be an important concern for mobile cloud computing. It should be noted that the performance of the Transmission Control Protocol(TCP) on cloud host servers greatly affects Quality of Service(QoS) of video streams for mobile users. With widely deployed Linux server platforms for cloud computing, in this paper, we conduct an experimental analysis of the twelve Linux TCP variants in mobile DaaS environments. The results of our experiments show that the TCP Illinois outperforms the other TCP variants in terms of wide range of packet loss rate and propagation delay over LTE-based wireless links between cloud servers and mobile devices, even though TCP CUBIC is usually used in default in the current Linux systems.

• IMMUNE NETWORK
• /
• 제23권4호
• /
• pp.33.1-33.13
• /
• 2023

Vaccination against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has been acknowledged as an effective mean of preventing infection and hospitalization. However, the emergence of highly transmissible SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOCs) has led to substantial increase in infections among children and adolescents. Vaccine-induced immunity and longevity have not been well defined in this population. Therefore, we aimed to analyze humoral and cellular immune responses against ancestral and SARS-CoV-2 variants after two shots of the BNT162b2 vaccine in healthy adolescents. Although vaccination induced a robust increase of spike-specific binding Abs and neutralizing Abs against the ancestral and SARS-CoV-2 variants, the neutralizing activity against the Omicron variant was significantly low. On the contrary, vaccine-induced memory CD4⁺ T cells exhibited substantial responses against both ancestral and Omicron spike proteins. Notably, CD4⁺ T cell responses against both ancestral and Omicron strains were preserved at 3 months after two shots of the BNT162b2 vaccine without waning. Polyfunctionality of vaccine-induced memory T cells was also preserved in response to Omicron spike protein. The present findings characterize the protective immunity of vaccination for adolescents in the era of continuous emergence of variants/subvariants.

• 한국인터넷방송통신학회논문지
• /
• 제16권1호
• /
• pp.129-137
• /
• 2016

전송계층 프로토콜처럼 전송제어 프로토콜은 안정적인 데이터 전송 서비스를 제공한다. 다양한 네트워크에서 TCP의 성능을 저해하는 일부 심각한 문제가 있다. TCP 네트워크 환경에서 중요한 문제는 빠른 전송 속도로 인해 또는 동시에 네트워크로 접속하는 다수의 새로운 접속으로 인하여 발생하는 혼잡이다. 그러므로 라우터에서 큐의 크기는 패킷 하락에 기인하여 증가한다. 손실된 패킷의 재전송과 감소된 처리량은 많은 비용을 발생시킨다. RED처럼 AQM과 ECN은 패킷 하락 보다는 패킷 마킹에 사용된다. IP 패킷 헤더에서 ECN 비트는 불필요한 패킷 하락을 피하기 위한 혼잡 표시로 추가할 수 있다. 제안하는 ECN과 AQM 메커니즘은 NS2 시뮬레이터의 도움으로 구현할 수 있으며, 그 성능은 다른 TCP 변종에서 테스트할 수 있다.

• 비교문화연구
• /
• 제41권
• /
• pp.113-140
• /
• 2015

본 연구를 통해 필자는 러시아어와 한국어에서 인간의 가장 원초적이고 본원적인 감정 중 하나인 "기쁨"이 어떻게 언어적으로 구현되는지를 살펴보고자 하였다. 그 과정에서 특히 "기쁨"이라는 개념이 러시아와 한국어에서 어떻게 기술되는지, 그리고 그러한 기술이 문화적 맥락과 어떤 관련을 맺고 있는지 살펴봄으로써, 러시아어와 한국어에서 "기쁨"이 가지는 의미적, 화용적 특징들을 규명해 보고자 하였다. 기쁨은 러시아어에서 주로 радость [기쁨]과 удовольствие [즐거움(만족)] 으로 기술되며, 전자가 보다 넓은 종교적, 정신적, 지속적, 문화적 맥락과 후자는 보다 구체적, 육체적, 순간적 맥락과 관련된다. 전자가 보다 거시적 맥락에서 의미와 투영대상을 찾는다면 후자는 보다 일상적인 맥락에서 욕망이 구체적으로 투영될 대상을 찾는다는 것이 전통적인 설명방식이었다. 하지만 오늘날 이러한 대립관계는 점차 약화되고, 기쁨의 대상이 되는 존재에 보다 초점을 맞추고, 그 존재의 실존적 관계에 보다 집중하는지 아니면 일상의 디테일에서 즉각적으로 느끼는 기쁨에 보다 초점을 맞추는지의 대립으로 전환되어 감을 알 수 있었다. 반면에 한국어에서 기쁨은 주로 "기쁨"과 "즐거움"이라는 두 개의 어휘로 구현되는데, 전자가 보다 정신적인 작용과 관련을 가지며, 그 유발하는 원인과 그 결과 사이의 논리적 관계에 대한 추론이 기저에 깔려있는 반면, 후자는 화자가 참여자로서 해당 상황에 개입하는 과정에서 즉각적으로 느끼는 감정과 연관된다. "기쁨"이 화자가 사전에 가졌던 기대와 계획, 예상과의 부합 혹은 충족으로 인한 흡족함에서 오는 것이라면 "즐거움"은 상황속에서 적극적으로 참여하고 활동하는 화자에게서 즉각적으로 느껴지는 감정이다. 따라서 러시아어의 기쁨의 부차적인 개념 "즐거움(만족)(удовольствие)"과 한국어의 "즐거움"은 매우 중요한 의미적 자질을 공유하고 있다고 할 수 있다. 결국 두 언어 모두 화자가 대상에 대하여 어떠한 태도와 입장을 취하는지에 따라 기쁨에 대한 2개의 변별적인 선택지를 가지고 있다고 볼 수 있다.

• The Plant Pathology Journal
• /
• 제28권2호
• /
• pp.123-136
• /
• 2012

Diseases caused by begomoviruses (family Geminiviridae, genus Begomovirus) constitute a serious constraint to tropical and sub-tropical agro-ecosystems worldwide. In recent years, they have also introduced in temperate regions of the world where they have great impact and are posing a serious threat to a variety of greenhouse crops. Begomoviral diseases can in extreme cases reduce yields to zero leading to catastrophic losses in agriculture. They are still evolving and pose a serious threat to sustainable agriculture across the world, particularly in tropics and sub-tropics. Till recently, there have been no records on the occurrence of begomoviral disease in South Korea, however, the etiology of other plant viral diseases are known since last century. The first begomovirus infected sample was collected from sweet potato plant in 2003 and since then there has been gradual increase in the begomoviral epidemics specially in tomato and sweet potato crops. So far, 48 begomovirus sequences originating from various plant species have been submitted in public sequence data base from different parts of the country. The rapid emergence of begomoviral epidemics might be with some of the factors like evolution of new variants of the viruses, appearance of efficient vectors, changing cropping systems, introduction of susceptible plant varieties, increase in global trade in agricultural products, intercontinental transportation networks, and changes in global climatic conditions. Another concern might be the emergence of a begomovirus complex and satellite DNA molecules. Thorough understanding of the pathosystems is needed for the designing of effective managements. Efforts should also be made towards the integration of the resistant genes for the development of transgenic plants specially tomato and sweet potato as they have been found to be widely infected in South Korea. There should be efficient surveillance for emergence or incursions of other begomoviruses and biotypes of whitefly. This review discusses the general characteristics of begomoviruses, transmission by their vector B. tabaci with an especial emphasis on the occurrence and distribution of begomoviruses in South Korea, and control measures that must be addressed in order to develop more sustainable management strategies.