Rheumatoid arthritis, caused by abnormalities in the autoimmune system, affects about 1% of the population. Rheumatoid arthritis does not yet have a proper treatment, and current treatment has various side effects. Therefore, there is a need for a therapeutic agent that can effectively treat rheumatoid arthritis without side effects. Recently, research on pharmaceutical drugs based on peptides has been actively conducted to reduce negative effects. Because peptide drugs are bio-friendly and bio-specific, they are characterized by no side effects. Truncated-IK (tIK) protein, a fragment of IK protein, has anti-inflammatory effects, including anti-rheumatoid arthritis activity. This study focused on the fact that tIK protein phosphorylates the interleukin 10 receptor. Through homology modeling with interleukin 10, short tIK epitopes were proposed to find the essential region of the sequence for anti-inflammatory activity. TH17 differentiation experiments were also performed with the proposed epitope. A peptide composed of 18 amino acids with an anti-inflammatory effect was named tIK-18mer. Additionally, a tIK 9-mer and a 14-mer were also found. The procedure for the experimental expression of the proposed tIK series (9-mer, 14-mer, and 18-mer) using bacterial strain is discussed.

Garlic and onion are the popular ingredients and spices world wide with their specific flavour. Plants of the Allium produce many chemical compounds related with characteristic taste and flavour. They involved many metabolites such as organic acid, sugar and amino acid. The growth environments of products affect content of constituents. 1 H high resolution NMR spectroscopy based on metabolomics provides useful and detailed information of various kinds of samples such as food, plants, materials and even body tissue. Therefore, 1 H NMR spectroscopy is widely used to study the metabolic variation because NMR spectra focused on not only major chemical components but also minor ingredients. Multivariate statistical analysis is the technique, which can be used to find the relationship between all factors and responses. It can extract the dominant patterns and useful meaning from complex data matrix. The information from multivariate data is commonly useful in understanding the characteristics of various samples. The 1 H NMR and 1 H HRMAS spectroscopy combined with multivariate statistical analysis could be used to classify of garlic and onion for the traceability issue even considering origins. In this experiment, considerable differences appeared in region of aromatic and amino acid distinction between Korean and Chinese Allium species.

Chemical accidents can cause a variety of damage, including damage to human health and ecosystems. In Korea, there are a limited number of crops that can be used to calculate damage done to plants after chemical accidents, and there are insufficient data on testing of damaged plants and methods for evaluation thereof because damage calculation methods and procedures have not been specifically established. Therefore, in order to estimate economic losses due to chemical accidents, it is necessary to establish specific calculation methods and procedures. At this point, improvements in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy are needed to improve the accuracy and precision of assessment of plant damage caused by chemical accidents. The purpose of this study is to standardize sample pretreatment methods for NMR application and to develop a methodology for estimation of plant damage via testing and evaluation methods for solid samples such as plants and powders at chemical accident sites.