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- [Life Sciences] Scientists identify a key protein for regulating immune response
- Associate Professor Boyoun Park Department of Systems Biology, Yonsei University ■ Life Sciences / Scientists identify a key protein for regulating immune response Research reveals a brain development protein plays a critical role in the body’s immune response. Researchers collaborating across multiple institutions in South Korea have shown that a DNA-binding protein, previously known for its role in early brain development that helps sustain an effective immune response. A team led by Prof. Boyoun Park found that the cellular nucleic acid-binding protein (CNBP) bound to many genes that influence our immunity, including those associated with a sustained immune response. The study, titled “CNBP acts as a key transcriptional regulator of sustained expression of interleukin-6,” has been published in Nucleic Acids Research. “A role for CNBP in immune response is very exciting but not entirely surprising,” comments Prof. Park, a highly cited faculty member in the Department of Systems Biology, Yonsei University, Seoul. Subsequent experiments confirmed that not only did CNBP directly stimulate the initial response of these immune genes, which included interleukin 6, an important factor for the development of cells that fight infections, but it also activated its own expression later in response to persistent infection. CNBP, a protein first identified as a key player in forebrain development is important for initiating and maintaining the body’s immune response to infection However, the loss of CNBP rendered zebrafish, which was used as a model of immune response in this study, highly susceptible to infection by Shigelia flexneri, a bacterium that causes dysentery in humans. "Our findings provide critical insight into the newly identified role of CNBP in the timely control of immune gene expression to promote appropriate host responses to infection" says Prof. Park. Interestingly, CNBP is only present at low levels in the mammalian gut, which serves as an interface with the resident microbial community, the “microbiome”, promoting immune tolerance of beneficial microorganisms such as those marketed as probiotics for health maintenance and enhancement. The authors of this study also suggest that the gut may deliberately dampen the effect of CNBP, to avoid increased inflammatory responses such as those associated with inflammatory bowel disease, which can lead to tissue damage and cancers. Importantly, atypical CNBP activity might be associated with inflammatory disease. Prof. Park notes “Our findings provide insights into the molecular pathologies of autoimmune diseases and various cancers and we hope these results can be used to facilitate the development of improved therapeutic strategies for these diseases.” Updated in Dec 2017 Find Out More Title of original article:CNBP acts as a key transcriptional regulator of sustained expression of interleukin-6 Journal: Nucleic Acids Research DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkx071 Contact corresponding author:Boyoun Park ( bypark@yonsei.ac.kr ); Ji Eun Lee ( jieun.lee@skku.edu ); Sungwook Lee ( swlee1905@ncc.re.kr )
- 통합관리자 2017.12.01
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- [Engineering/Technology] Future of turning waste heat into electricity
- Professor Wooyoung Lee Department of Materials Science & Engineering, Yonsei University ■ Engineering & Technology / Future of turning waste heat into electricity New study shows enhanced thermoelectric properties of large core/shell nanowire systems that can be used to design thermoelectric devices and module applications. Structures with dimensions of just a few nanometres (nanostructures) show unique properties that have been extensively investigated in an effort to improve the performance of thermoelectric materials. Thermoelectric materials convert temperature differences into electrical voltage that can be used to produce electricity. A thermoelectric device includes semiconductor elements that are mounted between two substrates. The semiconductors are connected electrically in series and thermally in parallel, so when voltage is applied in one direction, one side of the device creates heat while the other side absorbs heat. In turn, voltage is created when there is a temperature difference between the two sides of the device. A thermoelectric generator that is used to convert waste heat from power plants into electrical power is an example of such a device. Thermoelectric devices are also used in automobiles to increase fuel efficiency. While nanostructures have been extensively investigated and theoretical expectations were promising, few studies have shown experimental results of the full thermoelectric performance of nanostructures. The thermoelectric performance is generally predicted for the smallest possible nanostructures, which limits the practical applications of nanostructure-based thermoelectric devices. The composition of a typical thermoelectric module with thermoelectric materials connected in series. A previous study that looked into the thermoelectric properties of bismuth/tellurium (Bi/Te) core/shell (C/S) nanowires (wires measured in nanometres) reported a method that can control the thermoelectric properties of nanowire systems with fewer restrictions on the nanowire size. However, the full thermoelectric performance of the C/S nanowire system was not reported. This motivated a collaborative effort from an internal group of scientists, including Prof. Wooyoung Lee from Yonsei University, Seoul, to investigate the dependence of various thermoelectric properties of nanowires with varying diameters. “To estimate the full thermoelectric performance of the C/S NW system, the dependence of the various thermoelectric properties, including σ and S, on the NW diameter must be determined,” says Prof. Lee. He also states, “This is the first report of the full diameter dependent performance of C/S nanowires and is the first determination of optimum performance for large-diameter nanowires.” Prof. Lee and his colleagues systematically investigated the diameter dependence of the thermoelectric figure of merit, ZT, by varying the diameter of the nanowires from 16 to 850 nanometre. The results showed that increasing the diameter of the Bi/Te nanowires resulted in increases of the power factor. This resulted in a very high ZT value that was shown to be much higher than those of the extensively studied pure Bi nanowires. The improved performance of large Bi/Te C/S nanowires suggests the possibility of designing heterostructures (semiconductors with structures whose chemical composition changes with position). These semiconductors could be used in thermoelectric devices and in module applications such as thermoelectric generators and computer memory systems. Updated in Dec 2017 Find Out More Title of original article: Enhanced thermoelectric properties in Bi/Te core/shell heterostructure nanowires through strain and interface engineering Journal: Elsevier DOI: 10.1016/j.nanoen.2017.01.017 Contact corresponding author:W. Lee, ( wooyoung@yonsei.ac.kr )
- 통합관리자 2017.12.01
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- [Engineering/Technology] Biology comes to the rescue of the chemical industry
- Associate Professor Youn-Sang Bae Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Yonsei University ■ Engineering & Technology / Biology comes to the rescue of the chemical industry A new biomimetic adsorbent has been proposed to capture nitrogen from natural gas. Natural gas is often contaminated by large amounts of nitrogen. Therefore, removing nitrogen from natural gas using adsorption techniques is important for maintaining the amount of nitrogen under 4% in natural gas. Many metal-nitrogen compounds as well as biological metalloenzymes have been proposed for biomimetic nitrogen fixation to produce ammonia. Inspired by this, researchers at Yonsei University, led by Prof. Youn-Sang Bae, recently reported a new method to capture nitrogen from natural gas. Their method mimics biochemical processes and uses a metal-organic framework containing accessible chromium ion (Cr3+) sites. “Although adsorption-based processes are promising for methane upgrading, the N2/CH4 separation is still far from optimal and there is a critical need to design efficient N2-selective adsorbents,” believes Prof. Bae. Along with his colleagues, he successfully developed an adsorbent that allows for large nitrogen uptake and easy regeneration. Aerial view of a petroleum industrial zone where separation of natural gas occurs. Nitrogen-capture is a challenging issue in oil recovery, air separation, and the production of hydrogen from gases emitted by the steel industry. The removal of nitrogen from methane is essential in the natural-gas industry to meet pipe-line restrictions. Present-day cryogenic distillation processes have been used successfully for removing nitrogen from methane, but they are expensive and energy-intensive. The use of adsorption and membrane technologies is an alternative cost-effective and energy-efficient solution to the selective capture of nitrogen. Through integration of advanced experimental and computational tools, the researchers could prove that the unsaturated chromium III sites are the driving forces in the separation mechanism for both nitrogen/methane and nitrogen/oxygen gas mixtures. This study paves the way for the development of new adsorption technologies that can be very helpful for addressing issues in the environment and energy industry. This study could open the doors for future development of biological catalysts for capturing nitrogen and producing ammonia and other nitrogen-containing chemicals. Updated in Dec 2017 Find Out More Title of original article: Selective nitrogen capture by porous hybrid materials containing accessible transition metal ion sites Journal: Nature Materials DOI: 10.1038/NMAT 4825 Contact corresponding author:Youn-Sang Bae ( mowbae@yonsei.ac.kr)
- 통합관리자 2017.12.01
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- [Natural Sciences] A river runs through it: galaxy behavior under environmental mechanisms
- Prof. Sukyoung K. Yi, the head of research group (center) & Mr. Jinsu Rhee, the lead author (3rd from the left) ■ Natural Sciences / A river runs through it: galaxy behavior under environmental mechanisms Researchers used cosmological hydrodynamic simulations to show consistent behavior patterns in phase-space diagrams. Picture a river. Imagine it—the way the water flows, the way the ripples change when it contacts submerged rocks, the little eddies and whorls that happen near banks and channels. Now, drop a red ball into the river. How is it carried? Does it get caught on the bank? Submerged? Spun in an eddy? Now, picture the universe as a river with all its galaxies as little balls carried in it. In a much simplified version of that thought experiment, researchers from Yonsei University and others developed phase-space diagrams for galaxies that metaphorically show the flow of that universal river. In a recent study, Yonsei University researchers confirmed previous results; Prof. Yi, the head of the research group, stated that “if the full three-dimensional velocity and three-dimensional clustocentric radius is known, galaxies that fall in at different times tend to be found in particular regions of phase-space.” Essentially, this means that, like dropping a ball into the river at a specific time, it will end up at a specific location or behave in a certain way. Of course, this depends on the density of the ball, the speed of the river, and any obstructions that might get in its way. Galaxies encounter similar challenges. Sometimes, they go through a deep potential well. This is an area with large mass effects where the cluster galaxies get thrust through the hot gas at high orbital velocities and their neutral gas disk gets stripped away in the process. This is called ram pressure stripping. Other times, the cluster galaxies may get harassed with multiple gravitational wells. Just like a ball caught under a waterfall, the galaxy may get dunked over and over again, losing material and impacting star formation. If enough material gets stripped, the galaxy may change from a cluster type to a red and dead early type. Mr. Rhee, the corresponding author, refers to this phenomenon as an “environmental mechanism contributing to galaxy type clustering effects.” It turns out that, just like a river, environmental mechanisms tend to happen in recurring arrangements. Thus, galaxies (just like our little red ball) tend to end up in predictable patterns based on when they fell in and which mechanisms acted on them. The clever bit of this new study is that it provides a way to use the theoretical prediction from phase space analysis to compare with observed data directly. Using the observed position and spatial speed of a galaxy inside a large cluster, this phase space analysis gives two very important pieces of information about the galaxy: the time since infall into a large cluster and the amount of dark matter mass loss inside the cluster. Using our river analogy, this means that researchers can estimate how long the ball has been in the river and how much of the mass of the ball has been lost due to its interaction with the river. This new theoretical technique is expected to be a powerful tool because it also gives statistical error estimates on both time since infall and mass loss. Understanding the lifecycles and environmental mechanisms contributing to galaxy formation, growth, and dissipation can directly help shape our understanding of our own galactic path and unlock another secret to the formation of the universe. Updated in Dec 2017 Find Out More Title of original article: “Phase-space analysis in the group and cluster environment: time since infall and tidal mass loss.” Journal: The Astrophysical Journal DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/aa6d6c Contact corresponding author: Jinsu Rhee ( jinsu.rhee@yonsei.ac.kr )
- 통합관리자 2017.11.30
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- [Natural Sciences] Siberian sink: do more measurements matter in determining global carbon dioxide flux?
- Professor Hyun Mee Kim Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Yonsei University ■ Natural Sciences / Siberian sink: do more measurements matter in determining global carbon dioxide flux? Using optimized data sets and incorporating more precise data points from the Japan-Russian Siberian Tall Tower Inland Observation Network for a better world picture. In the wake of the Paris Accords and growing international attention focused on climate change and associated science, accurate modelling of carbon dioxide fluxes are integral to research in a wide diversity of disciplines. In the recent article, “Impact of Siberian observations on the optimization of surface CO2 flux,” the authors examined mathematically optimized data sets that included observations from the Japan-Russian Siberian Tall Tower Inland Observation Network (JR-STATION) and a control set without the JR-STATION data to determine if additional observations changed the magnitude of how much measured carbon dioxide was ‘sunk’ into oceanic or terrestrial systems or escaped to the atmosphere as contributing greenhouse gas (also known as ‘carbon dioxide flux’). With the wide variation in modelling, the already complicated task of assessing the total carbon flux in the world just gets that much more complex. Which data is useful? How exact is it? Can we use it in other models? These are all critical questions in the field of climate and atmospheric science, with huge political and societal implications. Carbon dioxide fluxes are key parameters for a number of fields and reducing uncertainty while increasing scalability would give researchers and decision-makers more confidence in their data. Per Professor Hyun Mee Kim, the corresponding author’s view, the JR-STATION data is particularly important for these decision-makers, since “Siberia is considered to be one of the largest CO2 uptake regions and reservoirs due to its forest area and the global significance of its dynamics and interactions with the climate.” Carbon dioxide moves through the world in a never-ending cycle of ‘sinks’ and ‘sources.’ When it sinks, it is taken up by vegetation or even dissolved in sea water. Burning fossil fuels, volcanoes are all ‘sources’ that can end up contributing to an atmospheric build-up that change the way the earth “breathes.” In the past, modelling was heavily dependent on northern hemisphere data points (terrestrial) and satellite imprecision couldn’t make up for a lack of ground-based measurements. Seasonal changes also made short-term data points less valuable than long-term total flux data. Data from JR-STATION (which had not been included in previous inversion studies) helped reduce the uncertainty of seasonal global carbon dioxide flux balance. This increased precision within the current carbon dioxide flux balance reported range, and reduced the variability and uncertainty in mathematically optimized data sets. Findings like this can validate other studies while enforcing rigor and consistency in current research. The researchers, including Professors Jinwoong Kim and Hyun Mee Kim from Yonsei University, commented that “The additional observations [from JR-STATION] do not introduce any discrepancy between the two experiments with respect to the global total sink, and they indicate only a small difference in the land—ocean CO2 flux partitioning.” So, JR-STATION data was more sensitive and gave greater precision for optimized models as well as correlated strongly with real-time observed carbon dioxide measurements (conducted by an independent third party), reducing model uncertainty, but was still within the reported value range (-0.07 ± 0.49 to -1.46 ± 0.41). Overall, studies like this one help to validate carbon dioxide flux data sets and subsequent modelling, giving researchers and other technical professionals a sound foundation for examining the role of carbon dioxide in atmospheric change and true future conditions that may impact communities. Updated in Dec 2017 Find Out More Title of original article: “Impact of Siberian observations on the optimization of surface CO2 flux” Journal: Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics DOI: 10.5194/acp-17-2881-2017 Contact corresponding author: Hyun Mee Kim ( khm@yonsei.ac.kr )
- 통합관리자 2017.11.30
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- [Social Sciences/Business] Ballot-box accountability impedes far-sighted policymaking
- Associate Professor Sounman Hong Department of Public Administration,Yonsei University ■ Social Sciences & Business/ Ballot-box accountability impedes far-sighted policymaking Central government bureaucrats more effectively pursue unobservable and long-term targets. Some government policies target benefits that the public rarely see or that only materialize years later. According to a study conducted by Dr. Sounman Hong, Associate Professor at Yonsei University’s Department of Public Administration, such policies should be entrusted to the central government. “Where the goal is a short-term increase in public satisfaction or awareness, the local government should take charge,” explains Hong. “However, where improvements won’t be visible to the public or will take a long time to achieve, the central government will likely do a better job.” Hong investigated every local water system in Korea from 2006 to 2012, measuring public satisfaction and water supply efficiency. During this period, many local authorities passed responsibility for administering water supply services to K-Water, a central government agency. This allowed direct comparison between locally and centrally governed services. K-Water achieved long-term success in raising water supply system efficiency, but their efforts were deeply unpopular with the public.[/caption] Following the change from local to central governance, public satisfaction plummeted, with citizen complaints increasing by 79%. Criticisms focused on service quality, prices, and various other issues. Such high levels of dissatisfaction even prompted the Korean National Assembly to query the situation in 2014. In response, the central government could point to efficiency improvements, measured by Hong’s study at around 4%. As expected, these improvements took some time to achieve, especially as local governments operating less efficient systems were more likely to transfer their water service operations to K-Water. For the public, of course, improving efficiency brings unpopular short-term costs. The greatest efficiency gains in a water supply system are achieved by reducing leaks. This may involve frequent disruptions to the water supply and higher bills to fund investment in pipelines and other key infrastructure. Both inevitably provoked the marked increase in citizen complaints. As Hong highlights, “We need to recognize the inherent trade-off between enhancing efficiency and its unpopular impacts. Such policies are less likely to be pursued by local governments, as the short election cycle directs politicians and administrators to prioritize public satisfaction.” By contrast, the performance of central government bureaucrats is evaluated through an internal management system. Rather than facing short-term political pressure, K-Water’s administrators could prioritize efficiency as their most important objective. Their effectiveness in this endeavor contrasts starkly with the losses suffered by many local authorities: according to regular media reports, water supply operations are a chief cause of local fiscal deficits. Hong warns, though, that the ultimate purpose of the government may be neglected when public service provision is governed by a performance management system, insulated from democratic forces: “excessive focus on narrow targets may lead administrators to ignore their mission of serving the public.” Consequently, activities aiming to increase short-term public satisfaction or awareness are better-suited to local governments, especially where direct interaction with citizens is required. For longer-term policymaking, shrouded in greater uncertainty, Hong’s findings compellingly endorse the central government’s superiority. Updated in Dec 2017 Find Out More Title of original article: What Are the Areas of Competence for Central and Local Governments? Accountability Mechanisms in Multi-Level Governance Journal: Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory DOI: 10.1093/jopart/muw048 Contact corresponding author: Sounman Hong (sounman_hong@yonsei.ac.kr )
- 통합관리자 2017.11.30
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- [Humanities] It's natural: Fractions are for counting, and decimals are for measuring
- Associate Professor Hee Seung Lee Department of Education, Yonsei University ■ Humanities / It's natural: Fractions are for counting, and decimals are for measuring Mental representations of numbers have roots that go beyond language and culture. Fractions and decimals are often thought of simply as alternative ways to represent the same quantity, and this is how they are typically introduced when taught to children. However, studies have shown that people conceive of an amount differently according to whether it is notated as a fraction or as a decimal and that they process the two notations differently. For example, when comparing two quantities to determine which one is larger, people are able to judge more quickly and accurately with decimals than with fractions, while fractions are more useful for representing countable items and proportionality relationships. Several studies have demonstrated the tendency of college-level adults to mentally associate discrete quantities with fractions and continuous quantities with decimal numbers. However, since these studies were all conducted with U.S. students, it remained an open question whether this difference was related to specific characteristics of U.S. language, culture, or education or reflected a deeper psychological phenomenon. This question has now been answered, thanks to work by Prof. Hee Seung Lee of Yonsei University and three fellow researchers at the University of Washington and the University of California, Los Angeles. The team took five key experiments conducted in the U.S. in 2014 and 2015 and systematically replicated them with undergraduate students in South Korea, where the language, culture, and approach to mathematics education are quite different from those in the U.S. “Our aim was to determine whether the differences in processing between the two types of rational numbers reflect specific characteristics of the samples used in the original studies conducted in the U.S., or reflect more fundamental representational differences between alternative formats for rational numbers,” said Prof. Lee. A quantity can be represented as a decimal or as a fraction. Each form seems to be aligned to different types of entities. Is this difference inherent, or is it a product of language, education, and culture? When they replicated the U.S. experiments in South Korea, the patterns and effects that had been found among the U.S. students were closely mirrored in their South Korean counterparts for all five experiments. Fractions had an advantage over decimals for working with countable sets and ratios, while decimal representations were strongly tied to continuous quantities and magnitudes. Prof. Lee said, “The studies indicate that this distinction is not simply an artifact of the American educational system or cultural context, but rather reflects important representational differences in how students store, manipulate, and think about rational numbers and the types of quantities they naturally model in the real world.” For developing general theories of higher cognition, it is critical to be able to distinguish between observations that are specific to particular educational practices and those that represent more fundamental phenomena. The team’s findings are important because they provide evidence that the differences in the ways people use and process fractions and decimals reflect deep conceptual differences in the human mind between these representations of rational numbers. Updated in Dec 2017 Find Out More Title of original article: Conceptual and procedural distinctions between fractions and decimals: A cross-national comparison Journal: Cognition DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2015.11.005 Contact corresponding author: Hee Seung Lee ( hslee00@yonsei.ac.kr )
- 통합관리자 2017.11.30
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- [Humanities] Yonsei Professor Among World’s Top 10 Reformed Theologians
- Professor Chung Meehyun The United Graduate School of Theology, Yonsei University ■ Humanities / Yonsei Professor Among World’s Top 10 Reformed Theologians Prof. Dr. Chung Meehyun recognized as one of the most influential theologians of the Reformed faith leading up to the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation. Yonsei University United Graduate School of Theology Professor Dr. Chung Meehyun has been recognized as one of the world’s 10 most influential Reformed theologians since the Reformation of 1517. The selection was part of the World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC) 26th General Council held in Leipzig, Germany from June 29 to July 7. In commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, WCRC chose 10 individuals who have played significant roles in Reformed theology. Chung was the only woman selected from Asia. Others receiving recognition were John Calvin, who led the systemization of Presbyterian theology during the Reformation, 16th century Protestant Reformer Marie Dentière (Switzerland), Karl Barth (Switzerland), Jan Milič Lochman (Czechoslovakia), Hebe Kohlbrugge (The Netherlands), Ofelia Miriam Ortega (Cuba), Rothney S. Tshaka (South Africa), Philip Vinod Peacock (India), and Lilly Phiri (Zambia). It was an honor for Chung to be recognized alongside Lochman, who had been Chung's professor during her studies at the University of Basel in Switzerland. Chung expressed a calling to spread more awareness of the Swiss Reformation in the theological and religious community in Korea in general, and to promising young students at Yonsei University in particular. She received her doctoral degree from the University of Basel, where she completed her dissertation, The Understanding of the Revelation and History in Theological Thought of K. Barth and J.L. Hromádka. Chung was the first non-European to be awarded the Union of Evangelical Churches' (UEK) Karl Barth Prize (Germany) in 2006, and the Marga Bührig Foundation's Marga Bührig Award (Switzerland) in 2013. She has been remarkably active abroad where she has served as Vice President for the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EATWOT) and Head of the Mission 21 Special Desk for Women and Gender, an international Christian organization based in Switzerland. WCRC is an international association of Reformed churches that together represent more than eighty million members worldwide. Denominations and organizations member to the WCRC observe the Christian theology developed by Reformation leaders Huldrych Zwingli, Heinrich Bullinger, and John Calvin. Updated in Dec 2017
- 통합관리자 2017.11.30
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- [Natural Sciences] Getting to know Virgo: a date with galactic evolutionary history
- Associate Professor Aeree Chung Department of Astronomy, Yonsei University ■ Natural Sciences / Getting to know Virgo: a date with galactic evolutionary history Galaxy clusters are made up of many individual galaxies impacted by environmental conditions that can leave trace effects on those individuals. Seeing relative interactions in that context can help identify physical processes that result in specific types of galaxies. Galaxy clusters are made up of many individual galaxies impacted by environmental conditions that can leave trace effects on those individuals. Seeing relative interactions in that context can help identify physical processes that result in specific types of galaxies.[/caption] In the continuing quest to understand the internal workings of our cosmos, Dr. Aeree Chung from Yonsei University with other researchers from around the world, attempted to create tools for projecting galaxy trajectories and star formations using only imaging of hydrogen gas. Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe and can be easily visualized using a wide variety of tools. In this case, the researchers focused on HI, which is the chemical symbol for the neutral form of the gas. This is important because it provides a kind of record for where the galaxy has been and what it’s been up to (interactively speaking). Galaxies, like all physical things, are subject to a wide variety of physical processes. Just as our past helps make up our personality, galaxies’ exposure to tidal effects and something called “ram pressure stripping” (basically the galactic version of getting squeezed and pushed) helps to create a unique signature in the amount of hydrogen available in their disk space. This amount of gas helps determine how many stars get formed, what the shape of the galaxy itself looks like, and can even help predict its trajectory, which, as Dr. Chung notes, “tracing a galaxy’s trajectory from a single snapshot is…difficult, if not impossible.” Enter the phase-space diagram and ionized cluster gas tracing to diagnose and plot the “stripping status of a galaxy,” or in other words, show the hydrogen lurking around a galactic center. To test the efficacy of their methodology, Dr. Chung and team “focused on Virgo cluster galaxies with high-resolution HI imaging data, which is an excellent indicator of stripping stage.” The group used phase-space diagrams to categorize thirty-five different galaxies in the Virgo cluster into four different hydrogen morphological types. This data (gleaned from VLA imaging—a survey of Virgo galaxies in atomic gas, or VIVA) showed that specific galaxy shape and hydrogen amounts corresponded to very specific locations near the cluster center. A galaxy’s ‘personality’ could be inferred by its relative position, HI amount and shape. Thus, researchers could piece together its past, a probable future, and take a look at internal formational patterns (like star birth) among the different galactic morphologies. Using these tools, researchers were able to represent “a wealth of information on a galaxy’s evolutionary history.” Research publisehd online in TheAstrophysical Journal in March 2017 Reference Title of original article: A history of HI stripping in Virgo: A phase-space view of VIVA galaxies Journal: The Astrophysical Journal DOI: https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aa6579 Contact corresponding author: Hyein Yoon ( hyein.yn@gmail.com ); Aeree Chung ( achung@yonsei.ac.kr )
- 통합관리자 2017.11.28
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- [Medicine] Survival mechanism of metastatic cancer cell revealed
- Professor Jong In Yook, Hyun-Sil Kim & Nam-Hee Kim (from left) ■ Medicine / Survival mechanism of metastatic cancer cell revealed Providing a New metabolic treatment target to inhibit the recurrence and spread of cancer. For the first time, Dr. Jong In Yook (Yonsei University School of Dentistry), Dr. Hyun-Sil Kim (Yonsei University Oral Pathology Department), Dr. Nam-Hee Kim (Oral Cancer Research Institute), and Dr. Keum-Suk Hwang (Korea Basic Science Institute) have discovered the mechanism through which metastatic cancer cells survive and alter their metabolic pathways. According to the Korean cancer registry, about 1/3 of the total population dies of cancer, despite the rapid development of medical treatments. Cancer patients typically die of either recurrence or metastasis, and there is no particular cure for metastatic cancer yet. Cancer cells attack the surrounding tissues (infiltration) and spread to other organs through blood or lymphatic vessels (metastasis), but the mechanism by which the cancer cells survive during their circulation in blood vessels is largely unknown. The research team has shown for the first time that cancer cells increase their metastatic potential by inhibiting the expression of the key metabolic gene “phosphofructokinase, platelet (PFKP)” through a particular protein called “Snail,” resulting in their own metabolic reprogramming. Snail is the product of an important tumor gene that is known to induce cancer recurrence and metastasis. Snail inhibits PFKP and induces glucose metabolism towards the pentose phosphate pathway (PPP), resulting in cancer cell survival during cancer metastasis. In an animal metastasis model, Snail increased lung metastasis. However, when PPP was inhibited through either restoring PFKP or a pharmacological process in the same model, lung metastasis was largely suppressed. The team explained that this result shows that Snail induces cancer metastasis by inhibiting PFKP expression and increasing cancer cell survival. In animal models, breast cancer cells that have metastasized to the lungs through Snail expression (Left, inside the circles) show decreased lung metastasis when the pentose phosphate pathway is inhibited through exogenous PFKP expression (Right) "This is the first report on the metabolic roles of the Snail-encoding gene during cancer metastasis,” says Dr. Jong In Yook. “This will provide a new treatment option with a metabolic target that can prevent cancer recurrence and metastasis.” The study was conducted under the support of the Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning and National Research Foundation as a part of their Basic Research Enterprise (Individual Research) as well as the Ministry of Education and National Research Foundation as a part of their Young Researcher Program. The results of this study have recently been published in an international peer-reviewed journal, “Nature Communications.” Updated in Dec 2017 Find Out More Title of original article: “Snail reprograms glucose metabolism by repressing phosphofructokinase PFKP allowing cancer cell survival under metabolic stress” Journal: Nature Communications DOI: 10.1038/NCOMMS14374
- 통합관리자 2017.11.27