| Tae Im Kim | 5 Articles |
To investigate the prevalence of Toxoplasma gondii in pork on the market in Korea, an in-house enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for tissue fluid (CAU-tf-ELISA) was developed using a soluble extract of T. gondii RH strain tachyzoites. As the standard positive controls, the piglets were experimentally infected with T. gondii: Group A (1,000 cysts-containing bradyzoites), Group B (500 cysts-containing bradyzoites) and Group C (1.0×103 or 1.0×104 tachyzoites). The CAU-tf-ELISA demonstrated infection intensity-dependent positivity toward tissue fluids with average cut-off value 0.15: 100% for Group A, 93.8% for Group B and 40.6% for Group C. When tissue-specific cut-off values 0.066-0.199 were applied, CAU-tf-ELISA showed 96.7% sensitivity, 100% specificity, 100% positive and 90.0% negative predictive values. When compared with the same tissue fluids, performance of CAU-tf-ELISA was better than that of a commercial ELISA kit. Of the 583 Korea domestic pork samples tested, anti-T. gondii antibodies were detected from 9.1% of whole samples and 37.9% from skirt meat highest among pork parts. In the 386 imported frozen pork samples, 1.8% (skirt meat and shoulder blade) were positive for anti-T. gondii antibodies. In Korea, prevalence of anti-T. gondii antibodies in the pork on retail markets appeared high, suggesting that regulations on pig farming and facilities are necessary to supply safe pork on the tables.
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Vivax malaria reemerged in Korea in 1993 and the outbreak has been continued with fluctuating numbers of annual indigenous cases. Understanding the nature of the genetic population of Plasmodium vivax circulating in Korea is beneficial for the knowledge of the nationwide parasite heterogeneity and in the implementation of malaria control programs in the country. Previously, we analyzed polymorphic nature of merozoite surface protein-1 (MSP-1) and MSP-3α in Korean P. vivax population and identified the Korean P. vivax population has been diversifying rapidly, with the appearance of parasites with new genetic subtypes, despite the recent reduction of the disease incidence. In the present study, we developed simple PCR-RFLP methods for rapid subtyping of MSP-1 and MSP-3α of Korean P. vivax isolates. These PCR-RFLP methods were able to easily distinguish each subtype of Korean P. vivax MSP-1 and MSP-3α with high accuracy. The PCR-RFLP subtyping methods developed here would be easily applied to massive epidemiological studies for molecular surveillance to understand genetic population of P. vivax and to supervise the genetic variation of the parasite circulating in Korea.
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During the past several decades, researches on parasite genetics have progressed from biochemical and serodiagnostic studies to protein chemistry, molecular biology, and functional gene studies. Nowadays, bioinformatics, genomics, and proteomics approaches are being applied by Korean parasitology researchers. As for Citations Citations to this article as recorded by
The WD40-repeat proteins serve as a platform coordinating partner proteins and are involved in a range of regulatory cellular functions. A WD40-repeat protein (CsWD1) of Citations Citations to this article as recorded by
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