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.

Plant growth and development strongly influenced by light quantity and its spectral composition. Young tomato plants were cultivated in growth cabinets under artificial light provided by red and blue light emitting diodes(LEDs) during 12 hours, then plants were exposed to monochromatic ultraviolet, blue, green and red lights as an end-of-day(EOD) treatment during 4 hours to study their effect on plant growth parameters. EOD lighting from various LEDs increased total fresh and dry weights as well as assimilation area compared to those in control. Blue light increased stem height, internode length and stem diameter. Monochromatic UV-A light reduced stem elongation, highly increased stomatal conductance. Compactness and health index of young tomato plants were increased in UV-A and red light treatments.

Bombolitin is a venom peptide originally isolated from bumblebees and possesses various biological activities, including hemolytic activity. Bombolitins exhibit amphipathic α-helical structure in lipid-membrane-mimicking environments. To investigate their pharmacological and toxicological properties, anti-tumor, anti-microbial and cytotoxic activities of bombolitins from Bombus ardens and Bombus ussurensis were evaluated. Bombolitins of the two species exhibited extremely high anti-tumor activity against ovarian tumor cells SK-OV-3 and NIH; OVCAR-3 at 25-50 μM, which is 2-fold more potent than other wasp venom peptides studied to date (Yoon et al., 2015; Yoon et al., 2016). The two bombolitins showed significantly high antimicrobial activity. However, bombolotin of B. ussurensis showed no antimicrobial activity against Escherichia coli. In addition to their high levels of anti-tumor activity, bombolitins showed considerable levels of hemolytic activity. Thus, to utilize bombolitins as a potential candidate for anti-tumor peptide drugs, further studies for reducing cytotoxic properties of bombolitns is essential.

As a result of development in medical diagnostic technology, the incidence of double primary cancer is increasing. In case that one primary cancer was identified by pathologic finding and has suggestive multiple metastatic lesions of the cancer, it is often difficult that the lesions are considered as another synchronous primary malignancy, not as metastasis of primary cancer. Here, we report a rare case of synchronous double primary renal cell carcinoma that was diagnosed initially as metastatic duodenal adenocarcinoma. A 66-year-old man presented with a palpable abdominal mass. Abdominal computed tomography showed duodenal wall thickening and hypervascular masses in the liver and left kidney. Esophagogastroduodenoscopy revealed an ulcerative lesion in the duodenal bulb, and endoscopic biopsy identified moderately-differentiated adenocarcinoma. We regarded the findings as duodenal adenocarcinoma with metastasis to liver and kidney. So he was treated with fluoropyrimidine-based chemotherapy for the diagnosis of duodenal adenocarcinoma with liver and renal metastases. After 10 months, he developed a right forearm mass. Morphological and immunohistochemical analysis of an incisional biopsy of the forearm mass were consistent with a diagnosis of metastatic renal cell carcinoma. Even when there is a pathologically confirmed malignancy, clinicians must consider the possibility of synchronous double primary malignancy in metastatic lesions.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the quality characteristics of blanched Capsella Bursa-pastoris with quick freezing, and thawing methods. Blanched Capsella bursa-pastoris was packed by vacuum packing (VP) and air containing packing (AP). After then, they were frozen at -20, -40, and 60℃ (immersion freezing). Then, they were stored at -20℃ during 1 week. They were thawed with normal (room temperature), running water and high frequency method. The pH and color of Capsella bursa-pastoris were not different before and after freezing. Likewise, total bacterial counts were shown without variation among them. The amount of drip from thawed Capsella bursa-pastoris was generally more in VP than AP. The cutting intensity of immersion freezing wes higher than that of other freezing methods (P<0.05). Therefore, we selected AP, immersion freezing and high frequency thawing methods for the high quality according to above results

The lesser paper wasp, Parapolybia varia, belongs to large subfamily Polistinae and is distributed in Middle East, the Indo-Papuan region and East Asia. P. varia is known to become aggressive when disturbed for defending their colonies, resulting in fatal envenomation. Vespid chemotactic peptide (VCP) and vespakinin have recently been determined to be the top two genes most abundantly transcribed in venom glands of P. varia. To investigate the pharmacological and toxicological properties of VCP and vespakinin, their antitumor, antimicrobial, and cytotoxic activities were evaluated. VCP exhibited a significantly high antitumor activity against ovarian tumor cell SK-OV-3 at 100 M. VCP also showed higher hemolytic activity than vespakinin. Antimicrobial activity was only observed with VCP against yeast Candida albicans at 1 mM. Since VCP showed a relatively low hemolytic activity but a considerable level of antitumor activity, it has further merits to be exploited as a potential antitumor agent with reduced side effects on normal cells.

We developed a polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based molecular method for sexing and identification using sexual dimorphism between the Zinc Finger-X and -Y (ZFX-ZFY) gene and polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) for mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) cytochrome B (CYTB) gene in meat pieces and commercial sausages from animals of different origins. Sexual dimorphism based on the presence or absence of SINE-like sequence between ZFX and ZFY genes showed distinguishable band patterns between male and female DNA samples and were easily detected by PCR analyses. Male DNA had two PCR products appearing as distinct two bands (ZFX and ZFY), and female DNA had a single band (ZFX). Molecular identification was carried out using PCR-RFLP of CYTB gene, and showed clear species classification results. The results yielded identical information on the sexes and the species of the meat samples collected from providers without any records. The analyses for DNA isolated from commercial sausage showed that pig was the major source but several sausages originated from chicken and Atlantic cod. Applying this PCR-based molecular method was useful and yielded clear sex information and identified the species of various tissue samples originating from livestock.

Bee pollen is rich in various nutrients and called as natural complete food. Bee pollens of acorn (Quercus acutissima) and actinidia (Actinidia arguta) are the most collected in Korea. But stiff pollen wall hinders dissolution of polysaccharides and lowers extraction efficiency. Thus, we measured antioxidant activity as DPPH radical scavenging and the total polyphenol content of pulverized and lyophilized actinidia pollens inoculated with fungi to confirm the husk removal effect. The total polyphenol content of actinidia pollen was highest in lyophilized pollen medium inoculated with Armillaria mellea, and was lowest in pollen inoculated with Lentinula edodes. Total polyphenol content of the lyophilized pollen was higher than that of the refined pollen and the pulverized pollen in actinidia pollen germinated with A. mellea. The total polyphenol content of the lyophilized actinidia pollen germinated with A. mellea was 1.4-fold higher than that extracted with water. Measurement of antioxidant activity using the DPPH (2, 2 diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl) free radical scavenging method showed that the lyophilized actinidia pollen germinated with A. mellea had the highest and that germinated with L. edodes was lowest in antioxidant activities. The lyophilized actinidia pollen germinated with A. mellea was 2 to 4 times higher than that extracted with water in the antioxidant activity of DPPH free radical scavenging. Many germinated cells were formed around pore of actinidia pollen inoculated with L. edodes, while those were formed at the end of hyphae derived from actinidia pollen inoculated with A. mellea.