The enzyme digestion of foods is known to have certain advantages, such as enhancing health improvement functions of functional foods. In this study, we investigated whether the memory enhancement effects of HongJam could be enhanced by enzymatic digestions. We found that enzyme digested HJ had more enhanced functionality than undigested HJ. We also found the molecular basis of memory enhancement by performing various biochemical and molecular biological experiments. (Grant No. PJ016908032023)

Recently, the occurrence of the fall webworm, one of the foreign invasive pests, is rapidly increasing due to the increase in average annual temperature due to global climate changes. In this study, we are presenting diverse eco-friendly technologies to control the fall webworm. (Grant No. PJ014845032023).

The CC chemokine receptor 5 (CCR5) is a G protein-coupled receptor that regulates chemotaxis and effector functions of immune cells. It also serves as the major co-receptor for the entry of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Recently, CCR5 inhibitors have been developed and used for the treatment or prevention of HIV infections. Additionally, it has been identified that CCR5 controls bone homeostasis by regulating osteoclastogenesis and the communication between osteoblasts and osteoclasts. However, the effects of CCR5 inhibition on bone tissue in elderly patients are unknown. This study aimed to examine the bone phenotype of aged CCR5 knockout (KO) mice. Femoral and tibial bones were isolated from 12-month and 18-month old wild-type (WT) and CCR5 KO mice, and microcomputed tomography and histology analyses were performed. Twelve-month-old CCR5 KO mice exhibited a decreased trabecular bone mass and cortical bone thickness in both femoral and tibial bones compared with agematched WT mice. Eighteen-month-old mice also showed a decreased trabecular bone mass in femurs compared with control WT mice, but not in tibial bones. Unlike in 12-month-old mice, the cortical margin of femurs and tibias in 18-month-old mice were rough, likely because they were aggravated by the deficiency of CCR5. Overall, our data suggest that the deficiency of CCR5 with aging can cause severe bone loss. When CCR5 inhibitors or CCR5 inactivating technologies are used in elderly patients, a preventive strategy for bone loss should be considered.

Pine trees are ecologically important in Korea. They are seriously imperiled by Pine wilt disease (PWD), by pine wood nematode (PWN, Bursaphelenchus xylophilus). Here, we isolated and characterized bacterial endophytes (BEs) from pine trees in Korea for biological control of PWN using BE metabolites. Using culture-dependent approach BE isolates were extracted from three tissues (needles, stems, and roots) of four pine species across 18 sampling sites in Korea. Bacterial isolates were characterized into 389 distinct isolates based on 16S rDNA sequencing. Ethyl acetate crude extracts (CEs) of bacterial liquid cultures were prepared using ethyl acetate and screened for nematicidal activity against PWN. BEs (1,622 isolates) were isolated; their taxonomic binning resulted in 215 operational taxonomic units (OTUs). Analysis of species richness and Shannon’s diversity of the three tissues revealed that BEs colonized the needles more than the stem and root tissues. Furthermore, based on nematicidal activity screening of 389 isolates, 44 BEs were identified, with two isolates exhibiting a significant inhibitory activity against PWN. Taken together, these data revealed numerous nematicidal BEs in pine trees, providing new insights that can serve as an effective and promising alternative approach to combat PWD.

Forest insect pests monitoring provides essential information for forest management against their outbreaks. Long-term monitoring data for forest insect pests have been collected by National Institute of Forest Science at national level since 1968. Forest insect pests for long-term monitoring include pine needle gall midge, black pine bast scale, fall webworm, pine moth, spotted lanternfly, etc. The monitoring data were analyzed effect of meteorological factors on the outbreaks of sporadic forest insect pests. Our results showed that meteorological factors can influenced on outbreak of forest insects. The species including Lepidoptera has more occurred when fall and winter temperature were relatively high during the period, suggesting that their outbreaks depends on mortality rate during winter diapause. In Diptera, species abundance was positively related with amount of precipitation in spring but negatively related with summer temperature. The species belong to Hymenoptera was also more abundant when spring temperature was relatively warm. These results can provide useful information for predict potential forest insect pests from climate change.

bakkat muljil conducted by the Jeju haenyo has a lot of implications as they expanded the activities to Asian countries and propagated their unique cultures. Until the early period of the Jeju haenyo starting the bakkat muljil, there had been no similar people who tried to harvest the marine product from the bottom of the sea in mainland Korea, some parts and islands in Japan, China and Russia with the naked body without any special tools as Jeju haenyo did. Not until the Jeju haenyo went there and started the diving job there did they live in those places and learned the skill. The efficient operation system (jamsugye system), adoption of “no harvesting period” system and the profit sharing through joint work of Jeju haenyo have been adopted. Jeju haenyo has especially propagated the knowledge on how to cope offshore. The effectively used it to their advantages, changed the local economy as well as accumulated their individual wealth through the job and expanded the new living scope to the sea. They also made a critical influence on the positive female participation in the job market.

Early onset torsion dystonia is caused by mutations in DYT1 gene in humans. Two deletion mutations and one missense mutation were found from patients with this devastating disorder. The molecular and cellular etiology underlying this disorder is not still understood yet. Because vertebrates have more than 4 homologs in their genomes, it is very hard to elucidate the exact in vivo functions of Torsin1A. Instead, Drosophila has only one homolog named Torsin. To investigate the in vivo functions of Torsin, we generated and characterized transgenic flies expressing coding regions of Torsin mRNA or double stranded inhibitory DNA constructs (RNAi). The specific antibodies for Drosophila Torsin (DTor) also were generated. The transgenic expression of DTor cDNA or RNAi in all tissue induced significant changes in DTor proteins levels. Even though expression of DTor cDNA in neuronal system increased the amount of DTor proteins, expression of DTor RNAi did not significantly altered the amount of DTor. Consistent with this result, the numbers of flies with motor-activity were not discernible among neuronal expression lines. However, flies expressing DTor cDNA or RNAi on muscles showed significantly altered locomotor ability, suggesting that DTor plays important roles in regulating motor-activity at the post-synaptic terminals of motor neurons. In addition, DTor over-expressing flies showed increased resistance to H2O2. In the future study, we will found how those phenotypes were accomplished by performing various experiments. (NRF-2012R1A1A4A01011674: HRF-S-201.-6)

Early onset torsion dystonia is caused by mutations in DYT1 gene in humans. The molecular and cellular etiology underlying this disorder is not still understood yet. Because vertebrates have more than 4 homologs in their genomes, it is very hard to elucidate the exact in vivo functions of Torsin1A. Instead, Drosophila has only one homolog named Torsin. To investigate the in vivo functions of Torsin, we generated and characterized transgenic flies expressing coding regions of Drosophial Torsin (DTor) cDNA or double stranded inhibitory DNA constructs (RNAi). The transgenic expression of DTor cDNA or RNAi in all tissue induced significant changes in DTor proteins levels as well as ability of motor controls. In addition, DTor over-expressing flies showed increased resistance to H2O2 or paraquat. In the future study, we will found how those phenotypes were accomplished by performing various experiments.

The wood-boring and bark beetle (Cerambycidae, Curculionidae, Scolytinae) community in Korean white pine, Pinus koraiensis Sieb. & Zucc., forests was surveyed using Malaise traps in 2007. A total of 1,669 wood-boring and bark beetles were collected, including 193 cerambycids from 16 species, 221 curculionids from 21 species, and 1,255 scolydid beetles from 6 species, of which the dominant species was the ambrosia beetle Xyleborus mutilatus Blandford. Ranked by order of population size, the wood-boring and bark beetle community in Korean white pine showed high dominance by one species of Scolytinae, suggesting the community was unstable and had low biological diversity. Thinning in Korean white pine forests influenced the abundance of bark and ambrosia beetles, whose populations in particular stands increased 1 year after thinning, and then decreased the following year.

Understanding how crops interact with their environments is increasingly important in breeding program, especially in light of highly anticipated climate changes. A total of 150 recombinant inbred lines (RILs) of F12 generation derived from Dasanbyeo (Indica) x TR22183 (Japonica) were evaluated at Suwon 2010, Shanghai 2010, IRRI 2010 wet season, Suwon 2011, Shanghai 2011, IRRI 2011 dry season, and IRRI 2011 wet season as a total of seven diverse environments. Traits evaluation included eight important agronomical traits such as days to heading (DTH), culm length (CL), panicle length (PL), panicle number per plant (PN), spikelet number per panicle (SN), spikelet fertility (SF), 100-grain weight (GW), and grain yield (GY). As a result of genotyping using 384-plex GoldenGate oligo pool assay (OPA) set (RiceOPA3.1), the linkage map for 235 SNP markers covering a total of 926.53 cM with an average interval of 4.01 cM was constructed and a total of 44 main-effect quantitative trait loci (QTL)s and 35 QTLs by environment interaction (QEI) were detected for all eight traits using single environment and multi-environments analysis, respectively. Of these, fourteen putative QTLs for DTH, CL, PN, SN, GW and GY found in single environment analysis had the similar position to QEI for those traits, suggesting that these same QTLs from both single-and multi-environments are major and stable for certain traits. To the best of our knowledge, 12 QTLs consisted of four QTLs for CL (qCL2, qCL8.1, qCL8.2, and qCL8.3), six QTLs for GW (qGW3.1, qGW3.2, qGW7, qGW8, qGW10.1, and qGW10.2), one QTL for GY (qGY3) and one for SF (qSF4) out of 44 QTLs obtained from single environment analysis were considered to be novel since no overlapping QTL was reported from previous studies. In addition, 12 out of 35 QTLs obtained from multi-environments analysis were also novel.

The world population has been continuously increasing and has led to the growing demand for rice. It is therefore important to pay as much attention to the enhancement of grain yield as well as grain quality. Grain size is one of the major factors determining grain yield and quality. A large number of genes are known to be involved in regulation of grain size. However, the influence of their haplotype combination is still largely unknown. Of the previously characterized genes, we especially focused on the six genes (GS3, GS5, GS6, GW2, qSW5/GW5, and GW8/OsSPL16) to expand our understanding of regulation of grain size and to develop a regression equation model that can be used for molecular rice breeding. A total of 215 rice germplasms, which originated or developed from 28 rice-consuming countries, were used in this study. The genotyping analysis revealed that different alleles of the six genes were widely distributed in our germplasm collection and also showed significant associations with the differences in grain size. Interestingly, we found that the relatively small number of haplotype combinations preserved in diverse rice germplasms and showed significant associations with the differences in grain size. In addition, we also found that a single gene-specific allelic variation plays an important role in regulation of grain size in the presence of a certain type of haplotype combination. Based on these results, we developed a regression equation model for prediction of rice grain size. We expect that our model can be used for rice molecular breeding to develop new rice varieties having a grain size in a particular range.

Rice embryo contains valuable materials which are related to human health and industrial material, thus controlling embryo size is more and more important in the field of rice breeding. Especially, main health-aid components such as γ -aminobutyric acid (GABA), tocopherol and vitamins showed positive-correlation with embryo size. We obtained three enlarged embryo character mutants derived from Hwacheongbyeo (Korean japonica cultivar) by treatment of chemical mutagen, N-methyl-N-nitrosourea(MNU). These three mutants were named according to their embryo size as ge-m, ge, ge-s. The result of allelism test between Hwacheongbyeo, ge-m, ge and ge-s represented that the embryo size of ge and ge-s was controlled by the same gene(Giant embryo, GE). Through GE locus sequencing of three mutants, we found that each of ge and ge-s mutant has a point mutation, causing non synonymous amino acid substitution. On the other hand, ge-m mutant, the embryo of which featured intermediate size in between those of Hwacheongbyeo and ge, turned out to be non-allelic to the GE locus, suggesting it is likely a novel gene, which influences rice embryo development through a different mechanism than GE gene. Fine mapping of ge-m is currently in progress. This work was supported by a grant from the Next-Generation BioGreen 21 Program (Plant Molecular Breeding Center No. PJ008125), Rural Development Administration, Republic of Korea.

Increasing demand on cereal grains to meet the population growth requires more production of rice as well as other cereals, which is supposed to rise up to 40% until 2030. Grain size and shape are critical factors determining grain yield. Several genes on grain shape and size have been reported, and of them, seven cloned genes were chosen for haplotype analysis, such as GS3, GW2, qSW5, GS6, GW8, GS5, and TGW6. We genotyped 218 rice varieties which had diverse grain size and shape originating from 25 countries. As for GS3 and qSW5, PCR markers were developed for point mutation and deletion, respectively. For the other five genes in which functional SNPs were reported, we designed primer sets to distinguish a fuctional allele for each gene. GW2 and TGW6 had two alleles, while the other five genes displayed three alleles which were evenly distributed throughout the population. Analysis on the relationship between haplotype of the genes and grain phenotype is in progress. We expect that desirable allelic combination of genes would assure the optimal grain size and shape for higher grain yield and market quality. This work was supported by a grant from the Next-Generation BioGreen 21 Program (Plant Molecular Breeding Center No.PJ009076), Rural Development Administration, Republic of Korea.

Rice eating quality is considered to be one of the top priorities in determining the agronomical value of rice. Thus the rapid evaluation of eating quality at early breeding generations in breeding programs for better eating quality is of great importance. However, it has been limited due to the complex nature of eating quality and the absence of standard evaluation method. In our previous study, we developed a evaluation method with a set of DNA markers that allows to predict the eating quality for japonica rices. Here we successfully developed another marker set for the eating quality of indica rices. We used multiple regression analysis to test 54 markers, which were preselected for their possible association with eating quality, using 24 indica varieties with different palatability scores. Of these markers, eighteen markers were found to be significantly associated with palatability according to sensory evaluation. Accordingly, a marker set in the model regression equation with a high R2 (0.997) was formulated to estimate indica rice palatability. Validation suggests that markers and the statistical parameters formulated by the equation could be a potential tool to predict the palatability of cooked Indonesian indica rice and could be reliable in developing country-dependent model equations for eating quality. This work was supported by a grant from the Next-Generation BioGreen 21 Program (Plant Molecular Breeding Center No. PJ008125), Rural Development Administration, Republic of Korea.

As the market demand on functionality rice has been increasing, embryo rice in which embryo residue remains even after milling has come to comsumers’ attention because rice embryo contains several functionality components. Consequently, development of rice varieties for higher rate of embryo adhesion to grains after milling has become one of the breeding objectives for quality improvement. In this study, we observed embryo dent of 49 commercial varieties and analyzed the relationship between embryo dent and grain size and shape. Embryo dent of rice grains varied 0.27 (Keunnun)~0.59 (Daerip 1) mm. Varieties Jinbu, Jinbo, Heugseol, Obong, Unkwang, and Cheongnam showed relatively deeper embryo dent, suggesting that they will be applicable in breeding for embryo rice. Embryo dent was correlated positively with grain width (r=0.53**) and grain size(r=0.34*), and negatively with grain width/length ratio (r= -0.38**). Strategies for breeding embryo rice were discussed in relation to embryo dent, grain size and shape.