Fermented halla gold kiwifruit (FHK) was prepared with Lactobacillus plantarum CK10, a bacterium derived from kimchi. We investigated the quality characteristics and antioxidative activity of madeleine added with FHK. The madeleine dough was prepared by mixing flour, sugar, baking powder, and then followed by adding salt, rum, different amount of the FHK (0, 1, and 3%) and butter. The total titratable acidity of madeleine increased significantly with the amounts of added FHK (p<0.05), while the pH value and total soluble solids showed the reverse trend. The color of madeleine became substantially redder with increasing amounts of FHK (p<0.05), and it appeared darker and less yellow at the same time. The total polyphenol contents of madeleines increased significantly with increasing amounts of FHK (p<0.05), but there was little difference in the total flavonoid content. When the antioxidant activities were measured in terms of 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH)- and 2,2’-azino-bis-3-ethylbenzothiazoline- 6-sulfonic acid-diammonium salt (ABTS)- radical scavenging, both measured activities of madeleines increased dramatically with added FHK in a dose-dependent manner. Our results suggested that the acidity, color, polyphenol content, and antioxidant activities of madeleines can be improved by adding the fermented gold kiwifruit.

Soybean is an important crop with useful traits such as the high seed protein and oil contents. Soybean reproduction is sensitive to temperature over 35℃. To obtain database of gene expression profiles, we used soybean cultivars, sensitive and tolerant. RNA sequencing was performed to find differentially expressed genes in two Korean soybean cultivars under heat stress condition. The transcriptomic changes in each cultivar under heat stress. We found 2727 common transcripts in two soybean cultivars under heat stress, and selected 20 transcripts to heat stress response genes. The 20 selected genes were analysed using BLAST2GO and PLANEX. The genes were major factor in co-expression networks. It appears that these 20 genes were mainly attributable to heat stress.

Although much effort has been made to find agronomically important loci in the soybean plant, extensive linkage disequilibrium and genome duplication have limited efficient genome-wide linkage analyses that can identify important regulatory genes. In this respect, recombination block-based analysis of cultivated plant genomes is a potential critical step for molecular breeding and target locus screening. We propose a new three-step method of detecting recombination blocks and comparative genomics of bred cultivars. It utilizes typical reshuffling features of their genomes, which have been generated by the recombination processes of breeding ancestral genomes. To begin with, mutations were detected by comparing genomes to a reference genome. Next, sequence blocks were examined for likenesses and difference with respect to the reference genome. The boundaries between the blocks were taken as recombination sites. All recombination sites found in the cultivar set were used to split the genomes, and the resulting sequence fragments were named as core recombination blocks (CRBs). Finally, the genomes were compared at the CRB level, instead of at the sequence level. In the genomes of the five Korean soybean cultivars used, the CRB-based comparative genomics method produced long and distinct CRBs that are as large as 22.9 Mb. We also demonstrated efficiency in detecting functionally useful target loci by using indel markers, each of which represents a CRB. We further showed that the CRB method is generally applicable to both monocot and dicot crops, by analyzing publicly available genomes of 31 soybeans and 23 rice accessions.

The interaction between Agrobacterium and soybean has been studied at the transcriptome level but not at the metabolic level. However, it is necessary to investigate the difference in metabolites between susceptible and non-susceptible cultivars for high efficiency transformation. We investigated the difference in metabolites from sonicated soybean cotyledons of Korean cultivars and Bert cultivar. To identify difference in metabolites, sonicated extracts were analysed by Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FT-ICR/MS). The soybean cultivars were classified by susceptibility using green fluorescent protein expression. We found a difference in metabolites between the high susceptible and low susceptible cultivars. The FT-ICR/MS experimental m/z data of different metabolites were compared with theoretical m/z in KNApSAcK database. The candidate list was made using KNApSAcK and focused on phenolic compounds. These candidate metabolites are speculated to influence factors in the interaction. This list of candidates may be useful to investigate the interaction between Agrobacterium and plants to increase transformation efficiency.

Resequencing data is actively used for searching QTL or analyzing genetic diversity in the crops. However, the complexity of genome, caused by genome duplication, limits the utility of genome-wide association studies and linkage analyses to identify genes that regulate agronomically valuable traits. Here, we propose a comparative genomics approach based on core or common variation-based recombination blocks (CRB) using single nucleotide variation (SNV) density information. We found that the soybean genomes are assembled with long and distinct CRBs as large as 10Mb. CRB-based comparative genomics enabled us to accurately identify recombination blocks at the whole-chromosome level. We identified the Ih locus that determines the yellow hilum color in soybeans using CRB-based mapping with representative indel markers. These results suggest that the CRB-based comparison method is a promising platform for molecular breeding and map-based cloning.