The ant species, Vollenhovia emeryi Wheeler (Hymenoptera: Myrmicinae) is endemic in East Asia and has invaded into North America. In this species, the queen caste shows polymorphism in its wing morphology; long-winged queen and short-winged queen, and two morphs are thought not to coexist in nature. This research is conducted to 1) deduce the phylogeographical structure of the two wing morphs in South Korea and to trace the distribution pattern from East Asia to North America, and 2) investigate the Wolbachia and WO phage infection frequency of the species. Either individuals or colonies of V. emeryi were collected from 80 locations, encompassing 68 locations in South Korea, 11 in Japan, and one in USA. Among the collected samples in South Korea, the long-winged morph is dominant and considered as the ancestral type, while the short-winged morph is very rare and derived character. The origin of the US population is neither Korea nor Japan at least in this study. However, we do not exclude the possibility that its origin is the other parts of Japan or the other countries. All of the long-winged morph are infected with Wolbachia, while the short-winged seems to be geographically partially infected. It suggests the possibility that the short wing trait is linked with the evolution of resistance to Wolbachia infection. Bacteriophage WO infection status has no correlation with host insect lineage.

CD63, a member of tetraspanin membrane protein family, plays pivotal role in cell growth, motility, signal transduction, host-pathogen interactions and cancer. In this work, the cDNA encoding CD63 homologue (TmCD63) was cloned from larvae of coleopteran beetle, Tenebrio molitor. The cDNA is comprised of an open reading frame of 705 bp, encoding putative protein of 235 amino acid residues. In silico analysis shows that the protein has four putative transmembrane domains and one large extracellular loop. The characteristic ‘Cys-Cys-Gly’ motif and ‘Cys188’ residues are highly conserved in the large extracellular loop. Phylogenetic analysis of TmCD63 revealed that they belong to the insect cluster with 50-56% identity. Analysis of spatial expression patterns demonstrated that TmCD63 mRNA is mainly expressed in gut and Malphigian tubules of larvae and the testis of the adult. Developmental expression patterns of CD63 mRNA showed that TmCD63 transcripts are detected in late larval, pupal and adult stages. Interestingly, TmCD63 transcript was upregulated the maximum 4.5 fold in response to DAP-type peptidoglycan during the first 6 h, although other immune elicitors also made significant increase in the transcript level at later time-points. These results suggest that CD63 might contribute to T. molitor immune response against various microbial pathogens.

The little sized ant species, Vollenhovia emeryi Wheeler (Hymenoptera: Myrmicinae) is the only species belonging to genus Vollenhovia in South Korea, and it is endemic in East Asia encompassing Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan and has recently invaded into North America. In this species, the queen caste shows polymorphism in its wing form, the queen with normal wings called the long-winged (L) queen and short-winged (S) queen with aberrant small wings, and the two morphs are thought not to coexist in nature, however the morphology of workers and males of the two wing morphs are indistinguishable. We obtained a L gyne from a S colony that had been maintained in the laboratory. In addition, we compared the genome size of entire castes of the two wing morphs using flowcytometry. Our results confirm that the two wing morphs are obviously the same species, and moreover, the wing morph may be determinated by the epigenetical process.

In Korea, twelve species in genus Myrmica have been described. Some of them are morphologically similar and this makes their identification difficult. For this reason, we collected several Myrmica species in question and inferred their phylogenetic relationship using the 418bp partial COI (cytochrome C oxidase 1) region from a total of 33 individuals. We found that the CO1 haplotypes are effectively grouped into three clusters that match well to their external morphological characters. Although this three species could be distinguished by the only small part of the COI region, the two individual sample of the M. kotokuii and one sample of the M. carinata are included in the M. kurokii group. The results indicate that the morphological identification could be obscure in the three species and it requires a close examination for this phenomenon.

Wolbachia is one of the most common endosymbionts best known to induce several reproductive alterations in its insect hosts. In some cases, the insect hosts harbor more than two strains of the bacterium. The Vollenhovia emeryi ant lives in dead trees and is morphologically subdivided into the long-winged and the short-winged. Interestingly the short-winged morph is free of Wolbachia, but only the long-winged morph is multiple- infected with the Wolbachia bacterium. We sampled four populations of the long-winged morph in Korea and performed pyrosequencing in Multilocus Sequence Typing (MLST), to determine the bacterial strain diversity. Six different gene regions (coxA, fbpA, ftsZ, gatB, hcpA and wsp gene) were targeted and amplified. However, the result shows that diversity of haplotypes is very high. The pyrosequencing approach in MLST, a new method of discriminating Wolbachia strains, is promising to effectively detect multiple infections and rare haplotypes.

Staphylococcus species are one of prevalent pathogens found in hospitals. Microbes that are a primary cause of nosocomial infection were isolated from a dental and medical environment it may assist the reader to explain what this is and how it differs from the ‘dental health care providers and ward health care providers’. To investigate the distribution of staphylococcus species in this environment, we used vitek II to measure drug sensitivity, and further performed biochemical testing. The isolation rate of staphylococcus species from the dental and medical environment was 100% but from dental health care providers and ward health care providers were 44.4% and 33.3%, respectively. In the analyses, staphylococcus species showed resistance to diffusion of cefoxitin and oxacillin discs. These staphylococci may be sufficiently positive for the mecA gene. Our results suggest that staphylococci might be an important cause of nosocomial infection in the dental clinic.

In haplodiploid sex determination, females are sexually reproduced from fertilized diploid eggs, and males from unfertilized haploid eggs. Haplodiploid sex determination seems simple in that sex depends simply on the ploid level. However, the underlying genetic mechanisms are thought to be much more complicated than expected. Among them, a powerful proposed mechanism is genomic imprinting. All epigenetic on-off systems require target genes, unless the systems target histone proteins on chromosomes. For Hymenoptera, a good candidate target gene in terms of sex determination is known either as feminizer (fem) or transformer (tra) in many insects. These two genes are essential for expressing femaleness. In most Hymenopteran insects, the maternal tra seems to be methylated and consequently not expressed, while the paternally derived tra gene is not methylated. Therefore, a fertilized egg with the paternally derived active tra gene will develop into a functional female. Like all Hymenoptera, ants (Formicidae) have haplodiploid sex determination. In Vollenhovia emeryi, however, queens are produced clonally while workers derive from fertilized eggs. Males are haploid, likewise deriving from fertilized eggs, but only after selective elimination of their maternal genome. Under the conventional genomic imprinting model, we would have expected that the opposite pattern of what is observed in others. Here we present extraordinary sex determination and suggest our hypothesis about genomic imprinting pattern in V. emeryi

The ant species, Vollenhovia emeryi, is distributed in Far East. The species can be divided into two major groups by their wing morphology of reproductives: short-winged and long-winged. A nationwide survey of the species was conducted for analyzing the mitochondrial haplotype diversity and genetic population structure. We collected 91 samples from 40 locations. A total of the 1239 bp partial COI (cytochrome C oxidase 1) region was used for the analyses. We found the total of 21 haplotypes. The mitochondrial haplotypes may correspond to the wing morphology. The genetic population structure examined potential geographic barriers of gene flow such as distance, mountains, rivers and plains which are non-mountain areas to prevent dispersal through mountain range. The result implied that no barriers considered in this study affected differently gene flow. Therefore, the behavioral characteristics of the ant may be the causal constraint of its genetic exchange.

Vollenhovia emeryi chosenica (Wheeler) (Hymenoptera: Myrmicinae) is an ant species frequently found in forests. In nature, two phenotypically distinct forms are found e.g. long winged and short winged. Unlike other hymenopteran insects, the ant is unique in its mode of reproduction. In this species, queens are clonally reproduced from unfertilized eggs. On the other hand, workers develop from fertilized eggs. Strikingly, haploid males are reproduced from fertilized eggs after destroying the maternal half of the genome e.g. maternal genome loss (MGL) consequently only with the paternal half of the genome. We collected the ant colonies nationwide in 2011. In this study, we demonstrate that the ant is infected with Wolbachia, the bacterial reproductive manipulator in various insects. Interestingly, only the long winged morphs seem to be infected. Furthermore, most colonies are mulitple-infected except two colonies collected from Chuncheon and Mt. Deogyu. We will discuss potential interactions among the Wolbachia infection polymorphism and wing morphology, and evolution of clonal reproduction and MGL.

Scirtothrips dorsalis Hood is a newly advent pest on citrus in Jeju. Both larvae and adult attack the new shoots and young and matured fruits of citrus. S. dorsalis is highly polyphagous with over 100 recorded species, but not known in Jeju. As a result from investigating the host plants in and/or around citrus orchards in Jeju during 2009 to 2010, they were 25 families 39 species. The total thrips examined on those plants were 13 species, and the richness thrips among them was S. dorsalis, Frankliniella occidentalis, Thrips tabaci and Thrips hawaiiensis. The widespread host plants of S. dorsalis were Mallotus japonicus, Paederia scandens, Hedera rhombea, Cayratia japonica and Clematis apiifolia and they can be also used for monitoring plants. On early May, the larvae of S. dorsalis were first investigated on the shoots of Mallotus japonicus, Lonicera japonica, Paederia scandens, Viburnum awabukira, Fraxinus rhynchophylla and Celtis sinensis. The other thrips species except S. dorsalis and T. tabaci, especially F. intonsa, T. hawaiiensis, T. flavus and T. coloratus were just found on flower stalks during the blooming season.

This study was conducted to investigate insect fauna in the four insect garden sites of Suwon, Yeongyang, Buyeo and Yecheon from 2005 to 2007. Seasonal population size of insects was largest from June to August in all the four sites. In the four sites, Coleopteran insects were dominant followed by Hemiptera and Orthoptera. Unique education/learning programs are successfully run at the insect gardens based on the three geographic types (i.e. urban, mountainous and rural). These activities will help preserve insect biodiversity in the area and visitors better understand life forms such as insects found in the areas.

The damage of citrus fruit by yellow tea thrips, Scirtothrips dorsalis Hood, was first confirmed in 2008, and has since been one of the serious pests of citrus in Jeju. This was reported on damage symptom on tangor cultivar, Setoka (Tangor Norin No. 8) fruits cultivated in a greenhouse and the characteristic of spatial disttribution of S. dorsalis caught on yellow sticky traps was conducted in three commercial citrus orchards. The feeding habits by S. dorsalis cause rind blemishes on the navel part of fruit. The damage is characterized by being scarped and figure like covered cloud on satsum mandarine fruit, but on by a brown ring of rough russeting that occurs on navel part of Setoka fruit. The season of damage occurrence was from middle of June to late of July. There was a highly significant relationship between the average number of thrips per trap and the maximum number caught on a trap. The overall differences between the linear regression models obtained from mean-variance relationship for each surveyed fields were tested by type Ⅲ error and contrast method. The characteristic of spatial distribution of S. dorsalis was better described by Taylor's power law than Iwao's patchiness regression, and the dispersion index which is the slope (=1.72) of linear regression model showed the aggregated distribution pattern. The sequential sampling stop lines at fixed precision level of 0.20, 0.25 and 0.30 were calculated.

The porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) has six structural proteins which encoded by ORFs 2 to 7 are designated as GP2, 3, 4, 5, M and N, repectively. In this study, we determined the expression of each protein using novel transfer vector, pBmKSK4 which has the polyhedrin promoter of BmNPV and 6xHis tag. The recombinant transfer vector was co-transfected into Bm5 cells along with bBpGOZA DNA. Recombinant virus was purified by plaque assay and amplified in Bm5 cells. Expression of each protein was identified by SDS-PAGE and Western blot analysis using anti-6xHis monoclonal antibody. The expression levels of the structural proteins in Bm5 cells were stronger than the expression system using pBacPAK9 transfer vector in Sf21 cells. As expected, GP5 was expressed at low levels from its structural properties and its toxicity for cells. In addition, each recombinant protein was purified using Ni-NTA spin columns. The ability to produce each protein in the baculovirus system indicates that these could be major candidates for the development of a vaccine against PRRSV.

This paper describes the traditional Ondol medical care, the specific combination of ancient and contemporary examples to be articulated. As a traditional Korean culture, to be extracted from the historical perspective, it described the relationship and origins between them, From a health perspective, in accordance with the logic and pharmacologyit introduced Ondol as the important principle of health care equipment. The modern architecture of some common harmful to the body, from the perspective of Ondol, it should be improved and based on scientific proof to the theory.