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Abstract : The biological roles of glycogen synthase kinase 3 (GSK3) proteins have long been extensively explored in eukaryotic organisms including fungi, animals and plants. This gene family has evolutionary well conserved kinase domain and shares similar phosphorylation properties to their substrate proteins. However, their specific biological roles are surprisingly distinct in different organisms. GSK3s play key role in key regulating the cytoskeleton and metabolic processes in animal systems, but plant GSKs are involved in quite different processes, such as flower development, brassinosteroid signaling, abiotic stresses, and organogenesis. In particular, recent studies have reported the critical multiple functions of BIN2 and its related paralogues plant GSK3s during organogenesis via connecting hormonal or developmental programs. In this review, we outline the recent understanding in the versatile functions related in physiological and biochemical relevance, which are mediated by plant GSK3s in various cellular signaling.

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Abstract : Medicinal plants resources are becoming important assets since their usages have been expanded to the development of functional foods for human health, more attractive cosmetics, and pharmaceutical industries. However, their phylogenetic origins and names are different from each country and quite often they are mixed each other resulting in the confusion for consumers. In particular, when they are very similar based on their morphological characteristics and distributed as dried roots, it is extremely difficult to differentiate their origins even by specialists. Recently, “DNA barcodes” have been extensively applied to identify their origin of medicinal plant species. In this review, we tried to overview the current research achievements for the development of suitable “DNA barcodes” regarding to the differentiation of medicinal plant species. Furthermore, more advanced techniques including amplification refractory mutation system (ARMS)-PCR, multiplex single base extension (MSBE), high-resolution melting (HRM) curve analyses are also discussed for their practical applications in the authentification of particular medicinal plant species.

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Abstract : In this study we confirmed the stable integration of Arabidopsis AVP1 in the genomes of bottle gourd T3 homozygous lines and its transcription, and additionally evaluated possibility of translocation of the AVP1 mRNA from transgenic bottle gourd rootstocks to wild type watermelon scions. Each AVP1 gene in two bottle gourd T3 lines is abundantly expressed under a field condition. Given the grafting between wild type watermelon scions and AVP1- expressing bottle gourd rootstocks, no translocation of the AVP1 mRNA was detected in leaves, both sexual flowers, and fruits of the scions.

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Abstract : Glycine betaine (GB) is one of the compatible solutes that accumulate in the chloroplasts of certain halotolerant plants under salt or cold stress. The codA gene for choline oxidase, the enzyme that converts choline into GB, has been cloned from a soil bacterium Arthrobacter globiformis. We generated transgenic sweetpotato plants [Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam] expressing codA gene in chloroplasts under the control of the SWPA2 promoter (referred to as SC plants) and evaluated SC plants under oxidative and drought stresses. SC plants showed enhanced tolerance to methyl viologen (MV)-mediated oxidative stress and drought stress due to induced expression of codA. At 5 μM of MV treatment, all SC plants showed enhanced tolerance to MV-mediated oxidative stress through maintaining low ion leakage and increased GB levels compared to wild type plants. When plants were subjected to drought conditions, SC plants showed enhanced tolerance to drought stress through maintaining high relative water contents and increased codA expression compared to wild type plants. These results suggest that the SC plants generated in this study will be useful for enhanced biomass production on global marginal lands.

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Abstract : A PyrcpPR-10 gene with differentially expressed was isolated by using the suppression subtractive hybridization assay between ‘93-3-98’ (highly resistant against scab caused by Venturia nashicola) and ‘Sweat Skin’(highly susceptible) and analyzed the expression pattern according to organs and cultivars. The full length of PyrcpPR-10 was cloned as 743bp with 480bp’s ORP, and was determined to encode a protein of 159 amino acid residues. On analyzing PyrcpPR-10 gene sequence compared with resistant and susceptible cultivars, ‘Hwangsilri’ (resistant), ‘Gamcheonbae’ (moderately resistant), ‘Wonhwang’ (moderately susceptible), ‘Niitaka’ (highly susceptible), and ‘Sweat Skin’ (highly susceptible) had identical gene sequence but ‘Bartlett’ (highly resistant) showed partly different sequences. The deduced amino acid sequence showed 64 ~ 98% homology and had the GXGGXG motif to known amino acid of other plants PR-10 by the BLAST X analysis. Among several organs or tissues, petal was showed highest expression level of PyrcpPR-10 gene followed by leaf, floral axis, bud, and bark. The expression level of PyrcpPR-10 gene was dramatically increased at 24 hr after inoculation in all cultivars and also up-regulated in accordance with resistant degree of cultivars. While resistant cultivars (‘Bartlett’, ‘93-3-98’, and ‘Hwangsilri’) induced relatively high expression level of PyrcpPR-10 gene, susceptible cultivars (‘Niitaka’, and ‘Sweat Skin’) showed low expression level. PyrcpPR-10 gene is assumed that it is directly connected with defense mechanisms to pear scab.

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Abstract : This study was conducted to investigate the productivity of biomass and antioxidant compounds in Polygonum multiflorum by culturing explants in air-lift bioreactor containing Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium, by adding different concentrations of auxins [indole-3-butyric acid (IBA) and naphthalene acetic acid (NAA)], sucrose, methyl jasmonate (MeJA), and salicylic acid (SA). Results of this study revealed that the explants culturing on the medium supplemented with 9.84 μM IBA and 50 g/L sucrose were observed to have higher productivity of biomass and bioactive compound than other treatments used. Thus, we expect that these results will be helpful for large-scale production of biomass and antioxidant compounds from Polygonum multiflorum.

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Abstract : It is a serious situation that the farmers' income has gradually decreased due to the decline of productivity of fruit trees infected with viroids. It has been known that Persimmon viroid (PVd) and Citrus viroid (CVd) are economically important viroids that can infected persimmon. In this study, the incidence of CVd and PVd in ‘Fuyu’ persimmon were identified as 41% and 34% in JeollaNam-do, respectively. The collected persimmon samples infected by both PVd and CVd were used for testing efficiency of the viroid inactivation methods. The samples were subjected to single treatment of the heat treatment (37°C), cold treatment (4°C), or antiviral agent treatment (Ribavirin), and double treatment of combinations of the three methods. Viroid inactivation efficiency was confirmed through RT-PCR. In the case of the samples subjected to cold treatment for 4 weeks, the viroid inactivation efficiency was most significantly high as 67% against the survival rate of 100%. In addition, in the case of the samples treated for 2 weeks with the antiviral agents and cold treatment, the viroid inactivation rate was similar to that of the cold treatment. In conclusion, the cold treatment showed the highest viroid inactivation efficiency, and this result will provide valuable information for production of viroid-free persimmon.

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Abstract : Based on the results in this study, here we propose a systematic micropropagation process for ‘Gisela 5’ that is one of the important dwarfing cherry rootstocks. When the apical tips detached from newly developed shoot in spring season were cultured on the half strength MS media with 0.5 mg/L IBA and 0.5 ~ 1.0 mg/L BA, the cultures scored the highest acquisition rate at 90% for normal shoot with vigorous growth and without hyperhydricity. As next step, the young shoots maintained in vitro well multiplied on the full strength MS medium supplemented with 0.5 mg/L IBA and 0.5 mg/L BA, in which multiplication rate was approximately nine-fold. Given the half strength MS medium containing 2.0 mg/L IBA, each transplanted shoot further developed robust roots. Finally, the plantlets were easily acclimatized in the compost consisted of vermiculite, perlite, and peatmoss in the proportion of 1:1:1. We expect that the results are useful for cherry cultivation and its rootstock production.

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Abstract : The extracts of Aruncus dioicus were investigated for anti-oxidant and biological activities in order to verify its potential as functional ingredients of cosmetic products. The ethyl acetate (EtOAc) extract of A. dioicus showed excellent scavenging activity using DPPH and ABTS anti-oxidant analysis at the 1,000 μg/mL concentration. While tyrosinase inhibitory effect was measure for whitening assay and showed 59.2%, the suppression levels of elastase and collagenase were 56% and 90% respectively for anti-wrinkle activity. Therefore, it is plausible to conclude that A. dioicus extract, especially EtOAc fraction which has outstanding whitening, anti-oxidant, and anti-wrinkle activities, could be used as a new functional materials for cosmetics.

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Abstract : The aim of this study was to investigate whether fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy can be applied to simultaneous determination of fatty acids contents in different soybean cultivars. Total 153 lines of soybean (Glycine max Merrill) were examined by FT-IR spectroscopy. Quantification of fatty acids from the soybean lines was confirmed by quantitative gas chromatography (GC) analysis. The quantitative spectral variation among different soybean lines was observed in the amide bond region (1,700 ~ 1,500 cm-1), phosphodiester groups (1,500 ~ 1,300 cm-1) and sugar region (1,200 ~ 1,000 cm-1) of FT-IR spectra. The quantitative prediction modeling of 5 individual fatty acids contents (palmitic acid, stearic acid, oleic acid, linoleic acid, linolenic acid) from soybean lines were established using partial least square regression algorithm from FT-IR spectra. In cross validation, there were high correlations (R²≥0.97) between predicted content of 5 individual fatty acids by PLS regression modeling from FT-IR spectra and measured content by GC. In external validation, palmitic acid (R²=0.8002), oleic acid (R²=0.8909) and linoleic acid (R²=0.815) were predicted with good accuracy, while prediction for stearic acid (R²= 0.4598), linolenic acid (R²=0.6868) had relatively lower accuracy. These results clearly show that FT-IR spectra combined with multivariate analysis can be used to accurately predict fatty acids contents in soybean lines. Therefore, we suggest that the PLS prediction system for fatty acid contents using FT-IR analysis could be applied as a rapid and high throughput screening tool for the breeding for modified Fatty acid composition in soybean and contribute to accelerating the conventional breeding.