세네갈은 농촌진흥청의 아프리카 국제협력사업의 일환으로 수행되는 「아프리카 다수성 벼 품종개발 ·보급」사업의 주요 회원국으로 본 사업의 효율적 추진을 위해 세네갈의 쌀의 중요성, 쌀 생산 및 육종 현황에 대한 기초정보를 얻고자 조사하였다. 1. 현재 세네갈의 일인당 연간 쌀 소비량은 85kg로서 인구 증가, 도시화 및 쌀의 편의성으로 쌀 수요가 급격히 증가하고 있으나 쌀 생산 부족으로 국내 쌀 전체 수요량의 44%를 해외 수입쌀에 의존하고 있어 쌀 자급자족은 세네갈의 국가정책의 가장 중요한 목표이다. 2. 세네갈에서 쌀 생산은 세네갈 북부에 있는 관개농업과 이기작이 가능한 ‘Senegal River Valley’와 남부세네갈의 까자망스 지역의 천수답지대에서 이루어지고 있으나, 가뭄, 냉해, 염 해, 철분독성 불량토양, 비료 및 제초제 부족, 조류 및 잡초 피해 등 생물학적 제한 요인과 수확후 관리 기반시설 부족, 쌀 운송, 시장형성 등 제도적 제한요인 등으로 쌀 생산이 저해되고 있는 실정이다. 3. 세네갈의 벼 품종개발은 UN산하 농업연구기관인 AfricaRice, IRRI 등과 인도, 스리랑카, 중국, 한국 등 국가 협력과 지원으로 이루어져 왔으며, 1994년 이래 60개의 품종이 개발· 보급 되었다. 그러나 2017년 이후 세네갈 국가육종기관에 의한 품종개발도 이루어지고 있으며 조생종, 수량성, 향을 보유한 품종개발이 주된 육종 목표이다. 4. 현재 세네갈 국내 쌀의 품질과 밥맛에서 수입쌀에 비해 열악하여 소비자로부터 외면당하고 있는 실정으로 향후 세네 갈의 품종육성 목표는 쌀의 품질, 밥맛 및 수량을 동시에 올리기 위한 전략이 최우선시 되었다. 이를 위해 역사적으로 한국의 통일형 품종개발 및 아시아 녹색혁명을 창생시킨 IRRI 의 IR8에서 증명된 바와 같이 자포니카와 아프리카 품종과의 교배를 통한 아프리카 적응 통일형 품종을 육성하는 육종전략이 필요하다.

Aquaporin channels (AQPs) are known to play an important role in the development of ovarian follicles through their function in water transport pathways. Compared to other AQPs, research on the role of AQP4 in female reproductive physiology, particularly in cattle, remains limited. In our previous study, gene chip microarray data showed a downregulation of AQP4 in bovine cystic follicles. This study was performed to validate the AQP4 expression level at the protein level in bovine follicles using immunohistochemistry, Western blotting, and immunoprecipitation assays. Immunostaining data showed that AQP4 was expressed in granulosa and theca cells of bovine ovarian follicles. The ovarian follicles were classified according to size as small (< 10 mm) or large (> 25 mm) in diameter. Consistent with earlier microarray data, semi-quantitative PCR data showed a decrease in AQP4 mRNA expression in large follicles. Western blot analysis showed a downregulation of the AQP4 protein in large follicles. In addition, AQP4 was immunoprecipitated and blotted with anti-AQP4 antibody in small and large follicles. Accordingly, AQP4 exhibited a low expression in large follicles. These results show that AQP4 is downregulated in bovine ovarian large follicles, suggesting that the downregulation of AQP4 expression may interfere with follicular water transport, leading to bovine follicular cysts.

In this study, we investigated the effects of the ripening level (50% and 100%), storage temperature (1°C and 10°C), and storage period (0, 7, and 14 days) on the fruit quality of the strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa Duch) cultivars “Arihyang” and “Kuemsil”, which are commonly grown for export in South Korea. Strawberry plants of each cultivar were grown in a plastic greenhouse, and fruit samples were harvested in January 2019 to evaluate the fruit hardness, gray mold rot, anthocyanin content, sugar content, and antioxidant activity. We found that “Arihyang” had a greater fruit hardness than “Kuemsil” across all storage periods excluding the day of harvest, and that fruit stored at 1°C had a greater hardness than fruit stored at room temperature (10 ± 2°C) for both cultivars. In incidence of gray mold rat, “Kuemsil” had a higher than “Arihyang”. The soluble solid content was highest at 7 days after harvest for both cultivars, with the exception of “Kuemsil” following storage at 1°C. The anthocyanin content was higher in “Arihyang” than in “Kuemsil” and was also greater in fruit that had been stored at room temperature due to the faster ripening time. Finally, the DPPH activity of fully ripened fruit tended to decrease as the storage period increased, while the ABTS activity was the same across all treatments. These findings demonstrate that “Arihyang” are more advantageous for long-term distribution as well as export than “Kuemsil”, and recommend that the two new cultivars of strawberry be cool stored at 100% ripening state and eaten within 7 days.

Jellyfish envenomation is a world-wide health problem, which often seriously affect the fishery and bathing activities. To date, few individual jellyfish venoms proteins have been thoroughly characterized yet. In this work, four species of scyphozoan jellyfish (Nemopilema nomurai, Cyanea nozakii, Aurellia aurita and Rhopilema esculentum) are compared according to their, cytotoxicity, hemolytic potency, brine shrimp toxicity and protein components. Jellyfish venoms showed higher cytotoxicity in H9C2 heart myoblast than in C2C12 skeletal myoblast, with the exception of C. nozakii venom. This result suggests that the selective cytotoxic effects may be possibly related to their in vivo effects of cardiac tissue dysfunction. On the other hand, hemolytic activity could be also observed from all tested jellyfish venoms. N. nomurai jellyfish venom displaying the greatest hemolytic activity. As an alternative method of evaluating the toxicities of jellyfish venoms, the toxicity on brine shrimp was examined with the four jellyfish venoms. From this, the venom of N. nomurai showed higher toxicity against brine shrimp than the other jellyfish venoms, which is consistent with the results of cytotoxicity assay as well as hemolysis assay of the present study. SDS-PAGE analysis of four jellyfish venoms showed the similar pattern with molecular weight of around 40 kDa, and appeared to be the major protein components. These results provided that N. nomurai jellyfish venom was potently toxic than other scyphozoan jellyfish venoms and may explain to some extent the deleterious effects associated with human envenoming.

There have been a lot of studies in the past for the method of predicting the failure of a machine, and recently, a lot of researches and applications have been generated to diagnose the physical condition of the machine and the parts and to calculate the remaining life through various methods. Survival models are also used to predict plant failures based on past anomaly cycles. In particular, special machine that reflect the fluid flow and process characteristics of chemical plants are connected to hundreds or thousands of sensors, so there are not many factors that need to be considered, such as process and material data as well as application of derivative variables. In this paper, the data were preprocessed through time series anomaly detection based on unsupervised learning to predict the abnormalities of these special machine. Next, clustering results reflecting clustering-based data characteristics were applied to produce additional variables, and a learning data set was created based on the history of past facility abnormalities. Finally, the prediction methodology based on the supervised learning algorithm was applied, and the model update was confirmed to improve the accuracy of the prediction of facility failure. Through this, it is expected to improve the efficiency of facility operation by flexibly replacing the maintenance time and parts supply and demand by predicting abnormalities of machine and extracting key factors.

Reproductive potential decreases with age. A decrease in male fertility is due to a combination of morphological and molecular alterations in the testes. Transient receptor potential vanilloid receptor-1 (TRPV1) is associated with aging and lifespan, and its activation causes apoptotic cell death in various cell types. However, the effect of TRPV1 on testicular apoptosis in aged mice has not yet been reported. TRPV1 knockout (KO) mice had a longer lifespan than that of wild-type (WT) mice. Lifespan was increased by 11.8% in male TRPV1 KO mice compared to that in WT mice. TRPV1 KO males lived approximately 100 days longer than WT males on average, and the maximum lifespan was markedly extended in TRPV1 KO mice compared with that in WT mice. The TRPV1 expression levels were highly increased in the testes of older mice. TRPV1 was expressed in the entire testes region of the old mice. In addition, old TRPV1 KO mice had lower testicular apoptosis than that of WT mice. Our results show that TRPV1 induces testicular apoptosis and suggest that TRPV1 may be associated with testicular aging.

Porphyromonas gingivalis (Pg), Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans (Aa), Tannerella forsythia (Tf), Prevotella intermedia (Pi), and Fusobacterium nucleatum (Fn) are major periodontal pathogens. Lipopolysaccharides (LPSs) from periodontal bacteria play an important role in periodontal pathogenesis by stimulating host cells to produce inflammatory cytokines. In this study, highly pure LPSs from the five major periodontopathogens were prepared, and their monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α)-inducing activities were compared in human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) and THP-1 macrophagic cells, respectively. In HUVECs, LPSs from Aa and Fn were potent stimulators for MCP-1 induction; however, LPSs from Pg, Pi, and Tf were much weaker MCP-1 inducers. In THP-1 cells, LPSs from Pg, Aa, and Fn were relatively strong inducers of TNF-α, whereas LPSs from Pi and Tf produced little activity. The Toll-like receptor (TLR)2/TLR4 dependency of various LPSs was also determined by measuring NF-κB reporter activity in TLR2- or TLR4-expressing 293 cells. LPSs from Aa, Fn, and Tf stimulated only TLR4; however, LPSs from Pg and Pi stimulated both TLR2 and TLR4. These results suggest that LPSs from major periodontal bacteria differ considerably in their cell-stimulating activity.