Ceramic powder, such as MgO, is added as a binder to prepare the green compacts of molten salts of an electrolyte for a thermal battery. Despite the addition of a binder, when the thickness of the electrolyte decreases to improve the battery performance, the problem with the unintentional short circuit between the anode and cathode still remains. To improve the current powder molding method, a new type of electrolyte separator with porous MgO preforms is prepared and characteristics of the thermal battery are evaluated. A Spherical PMMA polymer powder is added as a pore-forming agent in the MgO powder, and an organic binder is used to prepare slurry appropriate for tape casting. A porous MgO preform with 300 μm thickness is prepared through a binder burnout and sintering process. The particle size of the starting MgO powder has an effect, not on the porosity of the porous MgO preform, but on the battery characteristics. The porosity of the porous MgO preforms is controlled from 60 to 75% using a pore-forming agent. The batteries prepared using various porosities of preforms show a performance equal to or higher than that of the pellet-shaped battery prepared by the conventional powder molding method.

NRPS (non-ribosomal pepetide synthetase) plays an important role in the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites, which includes economically important compounds such as antibiotics, antitumor agents, immune-suppressants, siderophores, toxins, etc. In most cases, however, their functions and biosynthesizing pathways have been still remained riddles because of their cryptic expression and recalcitrant genetics. In our previous genome analyses of Cordyceps bassiana C101, we predicted the sequences of secondary metabolite biosynthesizing gene clusters, which contain non-ribosomal pepetide synthetases whose functions are already known such as beauvericin, bassianolide, bassiatin, tenellin, beauverolides, and oosporein. The authors focused on nrps6 that has not been functionally studied. The single-gene deletion and overexpression mutants were established via Agrobacterium-mediated transformations. PCR, quantitative real-time PCR, and southern blot analyses were carried out to confirm the correct single-gene integrated homologous recombination. In further study, comparative metabolic profiling between wild-type and mutant strains will be followed by their detailed chemical structure analysis through NMR spectroscopy.

Sanghuangporus sanghuang (Hymenochaetaceae, Agaricomycetes) is a medicinal mushroom which has gained particular attention in Korea as a natural immune booster and a cancer suppressor. Recent molecular phylogenetic studies clarified the species concept of S. sanghuang extensively used in Asia including Korea, China, and Japan. In this study, we assembled its mitochondrial genome and identified the locations and functions of genes and coding regions using next-generation sequencing. Raw sequencing data was produced using PacBio approach, and assembled through hierarchical genome assembly process (HGAP). Determining the mitocondrial regions GeSeq and Artemis annotation tools were used. And the resulting gene map was visualized using OGDraw software. A total of 108 reads was aligned with a coverage of 11.87X. The entire mitochondrial genome was 111,734 bp in length, in which 24 proteins and 46 transfer RNAs were recognized. The overall base composition is 38.37% A, 38.42% T, 11.05% C and 12.14% G with an GC content of 23.2%. This mitochondrial genome data can be used to understand its phylogenetic relationship and taxonomic resolution and as a source of markers for population and species delimitation.

Isaria farinosa (Hypocreales, Ascomycota) is a cosmopolitan entomopathogenic fungus affecting a wide range of arthropod hosts. It has mainly been studied as a insecticidal agent to control the agricultural pests. To investigate the useful secondary metabolite(SM) genes in Isaria farinosa C1012 strain, de novo assembly and genome mining were carried out. A whole genome sequencing with PacBio RSII system generated NGS reads greater than 4Gb, which were assembled into 16 contigs using FALCON program. The total size of genome was 33.36Mb. The N50 and N90 were 6,686,213 and 1,912,865bp, respectively. The assembled genome data was analyzed with antiSMASH3 program with a default setting to localize the gene region responsible for synthesizing SMs, such as non-ribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPS) and polyketide synthase (PKS). In this study, we predicted 16 NRPS, 13 PKS, and 9 PKS-NRPS hybrid gene clusters in I. farinosa genome.

Recent enactments of the Nagoya Protocol and UPOV convention precipitated international competition to secure biological resources. To address these challenges in the case of mushroom industry, collecting and preserving the genetic resources are urgently needed. Mushroom Research Division, National Institute of Horticltural and Herbal Science, Rural Development Administration, has operated mushroom resource management facilities which consist of eight separate rooms with automatic temperature and humidity controllers for the safe preservation of mycelial cultures or voucher herbarium specimens. During the past three years the liquid-nitrogen (LN) cryogenic system for the permanent/semi-permanent preservation of the strains commercially or scientifically important are successfully installed, and the computerized resource management system using QR code are adopted. Up to now, 1,586 strains of 261 species in 79 genus of edible and medicinal mushrooms were preserved.

Pleurotus eryngii, an edible white-rot fungus, is widespread in Eurasia and northern Africa. It has become a major cultivated mushroom in Asia, with a current global production rate of approximately 3 × 10 5 metrictons/yr. To improve the quality or productivity through breeding, a genetic linkage map is an important component. In this study, genetic linkage map of the P. eryngii was constructed using 98 monokaryotic progeny derived from dikaryon of parental KNR2312 strain derived from haploid meiotic spores. The whole genome sequence of P5 monokaryon from P. eryngii KNR2312 strain by Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) strategy was used to design the SSR markers. 484 primers pairs were identified by SSR Locator I and tested polymorphism via PCR. A total of 241 loci were mapped using Joinmap 4.0, comprising 222 SSR markers, 2 mating type factors, and the 13 INDEL markers. The map consisted of 14 linkage groups spanning 1003 cM at an average marker interval of 4.2 cM. The mating loci, A and B were mapped on linkage groups 4 and 11, respectively. The established linkage map and the genetic information based on NGS could be used for QTL mapping of agronomic traits, marker-assisted breeding that may ultimately lead to outstanding phenotypic characteristics. [Supported by a grant from the IPET (213003-04-3-SBY20), MIFAFF, Republic of Korea.]

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.]

For research and development of Silicon Carbide (SiC) mirrors, the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI) and National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) have agreed to cooperate and share on polishing and measuring facilities, experience and human resources for two years (2014-2015). The main goals of the SiC mirror polishing are to achieve optical surface figures of less than 20 nm rms and optical surface roughness of less than 2 nm rms. In addition, Green Optics Co., Ltd (GO) has been interested in the SiC polishing and joined the partnership with KASI. KASI will be involved in the development of the SiC polishing and the optical surface measurement using three dierent kinds of SiC materials and manufacturing processes (POCOTM, CoorsTekTM and SSGTM corporations) provided by NOAO. GO will polish the SiC substrate within requirements. Additionally, the requirements of the optical surface imperfections are given as: less than 40 um scratch and 500 um dig. In this paper, we introduce the international collaboration and interim results for SiC mirror polishing and development.

Distribution and abundance of species are influenced by their environmental condition. Among various environmental factors, a vegetation is one of the most influential factors, because it is used as habitats as well as food resources. Arthropods including insects play a important role in forest ecosystems as grazers, scavenger, predators, etc. Deciduous and coniferous forests have different plant community composition, resulting in different environmental condition. In this study, we collected arthropod communities at two different deciduous and coniferous forest stands in the Mountain Gariwang. At each stand, three different sampling methods were used: soil core for soil macroinvertebrate, pitfall trap for wandering insects, and sweeping net for insects in the shrups. Therefore, sampling was conducted at vertical habitats in the forest. The results showed that there were no difference in the number of orders from soil at both coniferous and deciduous stands. However, the abundance was higher at coniferous stand than at deciduous stand. Collembola was the dominant taxa in soil. Meanwhile, there were no statistically significant differences of community composition between coniferous stand and deciduous stands. Multivariate analyses was conducted to characterize differences of communities at different stands as well as vertical distribution in forest.