Pleurotus eryngii is one of the most commercially important mushrooms cultivated in Korea. However, the shelf-life of the fruiting body is short, limiting its export. A new hybrid strain H17 of P. eryngii was developed to extend the shelf-life by mono-mono crossing between monokaryotic strains derived from DanBi and KNR2774. Although the cultivation period of H17 was slightly longer than that of the reference cultivar Kenneutari No.2, the quality did not change and remained normal after a period of 65.0 days at 4°C. This result was significantly different from that of the reference cultivar Kenneutari No.2. Analysis of the genetic characteristics of the new hybrid strain H17 revealed a different profile from that of the parental and reference cultivars when random amplification of polymorphic DNA (RAPD) primers was used. These results demonstrate that H17 is a new cultivar with improved storability after harvesting.

Simple sequence repeats (SSR), also referred to “microsatellites” consist of tandemly repeated short DNA sequence motifs and have been applied in various marker-based studies. SSRs were isolated and characterized from ‘Heuktari’ and ‘Miso’, which are major oyster mushroom cultivars in Korea, by genome sequencing and bioinformatic analysis. The genome sizes of ‘Heuktari’ and ‘Miso’ were estimated to be 40.8 and 40.3 Mb, respectively, which are larger than those of other P. ostreatus species (PC9 and PC10) and smaller than those of P. eryngii (KNR2312P5). In total, 949 and 968 SSRs were found in the ‘Heuktari’ and ‘Miso’ genomes, respectively. Comparative analysis of five mushrooms including P. ostreatus var. florida (PC9 and PC15) and P. eryngii revealed that the number of SSRs in ‘Heuktari’ and ‘Miso’ were the highest among them. All mushrooms studied showed similar SSR distribution patterns. Tri-, hexa-, and octanucleotide motifs accounted for the top three fractions of all SSRs.

저자들은 간전이가 동반된 췌장암 환자에게 erlotinib이 포함된 항암화학요법을 시행하였으며, 치료 기간 중 장벽낭상 기종이 발생한 것을 확인하여 보존적 요법으로 치료하였다. 이후 환자는 동일한 요법으로 항암치료를 지속하였으나, 장 벽낭상기종이 재발하지 않은 것을 경험하였기에 문헌고찰과 더불어 보고하는 바이다.

Differentiation of Pleurotus eryngii is laborious and time-consuming tasks especially in mycelial status. For development of a method for differentiation of P. eryngii cultivars, simple sequence repeats (SSR) from whole genomic DNA sequence analysis was used for genotyping and two multiplex-SSR primer sets were developed. These SSR primer sets were employed to distinguish 12 cultivars and strains. Five polymorphic markers were selected based on the genotypes. PCR with the each primer produced one to four distinct bands ranging in size from 200 to 300 bp. Polymorphism information content (PIC) values of the five markers were in range of 0.6627 to 0.6848 with an average of 0.6775. Unweighted pair-group method with arithmetic mean clustering analysis based on genetic distances using five SSR markers classified 12 cultivars into 2 clusters. Cluster I and II comprised of 4 and 8 cultivars, respectively. Two multiplex sets, Multi-1 (SSR312 and SSR366) and Multi-2 (SSR178 and SSR277) completely discriminated 12 cultivar and strains with 21 allele with a PIC value of 0.9090. These results might be useful to provide an efficient method for the identification of P. eryngii cultivars with separate PCR reactions. (This work was supported by a grant from the Gold Seed Project [Supported by a grant from the IPET (213003-04-3-WTI11), MIFAFF, Republic of Korea.]

This study was undertaken to evaluate the relationship between in vitro maturation and plasminogen activators (PAs) activity on porcine cumulus-oocytes complexes (COCs) exposed to oxidative stress. When COCs were cultured in maturation medium with hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), the proportion of the germinal vesicle breakdown (GVBD) and oocytes maturation were decreased with addition of H2O2, and were significantly (p<0.05) lower in medium with 0.1 mM H2O2 than control group. Also, the rate of degenerated oocytes was increased in as H2O2 concentration increased. When COCs were cultured for 48 h, three plasminogen-dependent lytic bands were observed: tissue-type PA (tPA); urokinase-type PA (uPA); and tPA-PA inhibitor (tPA-PAI). PA activity was quantified using SDS-PAGE and zymography. When H2O2 concentration was increased, tPA and tPA-PAI activities also increased in porcine oocytes cultured for 48 h, but not uPA. In other experiment, embryos were divided into three groups and cultured in (1) control medium, (2) control medium with 1.0 mM H2O2 and (3) control medium with 1.0 mM H2O2 along with catalase in concentrations of 0.01, 0.1, and 1.0 mg/ml, respectively. H2O2 decreased the rate of GVBD and maturation in porcine COCs but catalase revealed protective activity against oxidative stress caused by H2O2. In this experiment, tPA and tPA-PAI activities were higher in media with 1.0 mM H2O2 alone. Increasing concentration of catalase decreased tPA and tPA-PAI activities in porcine oocytes. These results indicate that the exposure of porcine follicular oocytes to ROS inhibits oocytes maturation to metaphase-II stage and increase the oocytes degeneration. Also, we speculated that increased ROS level may trigger tPA and tPA-PAI activities in porcine oocytes matured in vitro.

The present case occurred in the cervical area of 51 years old male, who was generally healthy but recently complained of cervical swelling with mild pain. The tumor recently grew rapidly for 5 months. He was referred from local hospital in the diagnosis of metastatic tumor in cervical lymph. In the biopsy procedure, the tumor mass was ill-defined and not associated with cervical lymph node. The microsection showed a highly proliferative fibrous tissue infiltrative growth into the periphery. The spindle tumor cells were stained red in Masson trichrome stain, and strongly positive for PCNA and β-catenine, and partly positive for α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA), but negative for S-100 and desmin. The differential diagnosis in primary biopsy examination was made as leiomyosarcoma, malignant schwannoma, and mesenchymal sarcoma. Under the diagnosis of sarcoma the patient was operated for tumor resection including cervical lymph nodes. The tumor mass was tightly attached on the lower border of left mandibular body. After the surgical operation the tumor tissue was more investigated with further immunohistochemical stainings, and discussed with several pathologists in Gangneung area. Finally the tumor was turned out to be a nodular fasciitis with pseudosarcomatous proliferation, and also confirmed that the pseudosarcomatous spindle cells belonged to the myofibroblasts originated from the fibrovascular fascial tissue. The present study demonstrated a rare case of nodular fasciitis, which should be differentially diagnosed from the malignant head and neck tumors.

Eumenis autonoe, a member of the lepidopteran family Nymphalidae (superfamily Papilionoidea) is an endangered species, and is found only on one isolated remote island, Jeju in South Korea, on Halla Mt., at altitudes higher than 1,400 meters. In this study, we report the complete mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) of E. autonoe. The 15,489-bp long E. autonoe genome evidenced the typical gene content found in animal mitogenomes, and harbors the gene arrangement identical to all other sequenced lepidopteran insects, which differs from the most common type found in insects, due to the movement of tRNAMet to a position 5’-upstream of tRNAIle. As has been observed in many other lepidopteran insects, no typical ATN codon for the COI gene is available. Thus, we also designated the CGA (arginine) found at the beginning of the COI gene as a lepidopteran COI starter, in accordance with previous suggestions. The 678-bp long A+T-rich region, which is second longest in sequenced lepidopteran insects, harbors 10 identical 27-bp long tandem repeats plus one 13-bp long incomplete final repeat. Such a repeat sequence has been, thus far, only rarely detected in lepidopteran mitogenomes. The E. autonoe A+T-rich region harbors a poly-T stretch of 19 bp and a conserved ATAGA motif located at the end of the region, which have been suggested to function as structural signals for minor-strand mtDNA replication.

To understand geographic genetic variation of the species and relationships among populations of the bumble bee, Bombus ardens, we sequenced a portion of mitochondrial COI gene, which corresponds to "DNA Barcode" region (658 bp) from 101 B. ardens individuals collected over 11 localities in Korea. The sequence data were used to investigate genetic diversity within populations and species, geographic variation within species, phylogeographic relationship among populations, and phylogenetic relationship among haplotypes. A total of nine haplortpes were found, but they very close to each other (a maximum sequence divergence of 0. 304%). Summarized, overall moderate to low genetic diversity within populations and species was characteristic, concordant with the high potential to disperse of B. ardens in Korea. There was no clear regional subdivision was observed and relatively high rate of gene flow among localities and low FST was characteristic.

A new light green seed coat Azuki bean cultivar, "Yeonkeum" was developed at the National Institute of Crop Science(NICS) and the Yeongnam Agricultural Research Institute (YARI) in 2005. Yeonkeum was selected from the cross between Jaja-sodun and "IT12099

In this study, we present different physiological responses to cold acclimation between the freezing tolerant barley landrace, Jeonnamjaerae, and the freezing sensitive line, PI283398, chosen by the previous field test. We tried to identify some key facto