Jae-Han Cho’s research while affiliated with National Institute of Horticultural and Herbal Sciences and other places

In the course of myco-floristic survey, the authors collected an ascomycetous mushroom with a small yellow disc covered with brownish hairs. The morphological and molecular identifications showed that this fungus is Erioscyphella abnormis which has not been recorded in Korea. In this article, its diagnostic description, illustration, and cultural characteristics are provided.

Tricholoma matsutake is an ectomycorrhizal fungus that has obligate symbiotic relationships with Pinus densiflora. Its fruiting body has a distinctive flavor and is traded at a high price. Thus, it has been a significant source of income for rural communities in Korea. We hypothesized that biotic factors considerably influence the formation of the T. matsutake mushroom, and the soils producing T. matsutake share similar microbial characteristics. Therefore, the present study aimed to detect the specific fungal and bacterial groups in T. matsutake production soils (shiro+) and nonproduction soils (shiro−) of the Bonghwa and Yanyang regions via next-generation sequencing. In a total of 15 phyla, 36 classes, 234 genera of bacteria, six phyla, 29 classes, and 164 genera of fungi were detected from four samples at both sites. The species diversity of shiro+ soils was lower than the shiro− samples in both the fungal and bacterial groups. In addition, we did not find high similarities in the microbial communities between the shiro+ soils of the two regions. However, in the resulting differences between the fungal communities categorized by their trophic assembly, we found a distinguishable compositional pattern in the fungal communities from the shiro+ soils and the shiro− soils of the two sites. Thus, the similarity among the microbial communities in the forest soils may be due to the fact that the microbial communities in the T. matsutake dominant soils are closely associated with biotic factors and abiotic factors such as soil properties.

Ganoderma lucidum is used widely in oriental medicine to treat obesity and metabolic diseases. Bioactive substances extracted from G. lucidum have been shown to ameliorate dyslipidemia, insulin resistance, and type 2 diabetes in mice via multiple 5′ AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK)-mediated mechanisms; however, further studies are required to elucidate the anti-obesity effects of G. lucidum in vivo. In this study, we demonstrated that 3% G. lucidum extract powder (GEP) can be used to prevent obesity and insulin resistance in a mouse model. C57BL/6 mice were provided with a normal diet (ND) or a high-fat diet (HFD) supplemented with 1, 3, or 5% GEP for 12 weeks and the effect of GEP on body weight, liver, adipose tissue, adipokines, insulin and glucose tolerance (ITT and GTT), glucose uptake, glucose-metabolism related proteins, and lipogenesis related genes was examined. GEP administration was found to reduce weight gain in the liver and fat tissues of the mice. In addition, serum parameters were significantly lower in the 3% and 5% GEP mice groups than in those fed a HFD alone, whereas adiponectin levels were significantly higher. We also observed that GEP improved glucose metabolism, reduced lipid accumulation in the liver, and reduced adipocyte size. These effects may have been mediated by enhanced AMPK activation, which attenuated the transcription and translation of lipogenic genes such as fatty acid synthase (FAS), stearoyl-CoA desaturase 1 (SCD1), and sterol regulatory element-binding protein-1c (SREBP1c). Moreover, AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) activation increased acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC), insulin receptor (IR), IR substrate 1 (IRS1), and Akt protein expression and activation, as well as glucose transporter type 1/4 (GLUT1/4) protein production, thereby improving insulin sensitivity and glucose metabolism. Together, these findings demonstrate that G. lucidum may effectively prevent obesity and suppress obesity-induced insulin resistance via AMPK activation.

Mycotherapy has been shown to improve the overall response rate during cancer treatment and reduce some chemotherapy-related adverse events. Ganoderma lucidum is a traditional mushroom used for pharmaceutical purposes. G. lucidum extracts (GLE) showed potential antitumor activities against several cancers. These tumor inhibitory effects of GLE were attributed to the suppression of the proliferation and metastasis of cancer cells. Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-associated gastric carcinoma (EBVaGC) is defined as the monoclonal proliferation of carcinoma cells with latent EBV infection. The inhibitory effects of GLE against EBVaGC are questionable. The aim of this study was to investigate GLE as potential antitumor agents and a counterpart of quercetin (QCT) for the cotreatment in suppressing EBVaGC development. Therefore, this study conducted antitumor assays using a EBVaGC xenograft mice model and found that GLE could suppress tumor development. These inhibitory effects were significantly augmented by the low concentration of the quercetin (QCT) cotreatment in the xenograft mice. The addition of GLE in low concentrations synergistically reinforced QCT-induced apoptosis and EBV lytic reactivation. GLE contains various polysaccharides and triterpenes, such as ganoderic acid. Interestingly, the addition of ganoderic acid A (GAA) could produce similar bioactive effects like GLE in QCT-mediated antitumor activity. The GAA addition in low concentrations synergistically reinforced QCT-induced apoptosis and EBV lytic reactivation. GAA was sufficiently effective as much as GLE. Therefore, our results suggested that QCT-supplemented GLE could be a potential food adjunct for the prevention of EBVaGC development.

Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) have been emerging as a promising method for relational representation including recommender systems. However, various challenging issues of social graphs hinder the practical usage of GNNs for social recommendation, such as their complex noisy connections and high heterogeneity. The oversmoothing of GNNs is an obstacle of GNN-based social recommendation as well. Here we propose a new graph embedding method Heterogeneous Graph Propagation (HGP) to tackle these issues. HGP uses a group-user-item tripartite graph as input to reduce the number of edges and the complexity of paths in a social graph. To solve the oversmoothing issue, HGP embeds nodes under a personalized PageRank based propagation scheme, separately for group-user graph and user-item graph. Node embeddings from each graph are integrated using an attention mechanism. We evaluate our HGP on a large-scale real-world dataset consisting of 1,645,279 nodes and 4,711,208 edges. The experimental results show that HGP outperforms several baselines in terms of AUC and F1-score metrics.

The total polyphenol and physiological activities of Pleurotus ostreatus 30% fermented ethanol using different drying methods and extraction periods were investigated. Based on the observed polyphenol content and physiological activity, freeze-drying showed better results than hot air-drying method for P. ostreatus extracted with 30% fermented ethanol for more than 15 days. The total phenolic compound content of `Gosol` following thefreeze-drying method for 15 days showed the highest value of 0.49±0.02mg/mL. Freeze-drying with extraction for 30 days for ASI 2344 showed the highest antioxidant activity based on the DPPH radical scavenging rate of 35.50±3.29%. Freeze-drying `Gosol` for 30 days resulted inthe highest anti-inflammatory and nitrite scavenging activity of 48.40±3.38%. Our results showed that P. ostreatus is a functional food.

Sanghuang is a medicinal mushroom that has gained particular attention in Korea. It has been extensively studied for the past few decades as a natural immune booster and cancer suppressor. Although the scientific name, Phellinus linteus, has been commonly used to refer to the sanghuang mushroom, the species identity of sanghuang has been called into question due to the ambiguity of its circumscription and the inadequacy of morphological distinctions within allied species. Because the species concept of sanghuang has been elucidated by recent molecular phylogenetic studies, it has become necessary to clarify the taxonomic positions of sanghuang strains extensively utilized in Korea. We conducted a phylogenetic analysis of 74 strains belonging to the P. linteus-baumii complex based on ITS nrDNA sequences. Parental stains of sanghuang varieties formally registered in the Korea Seed & Variety Service, including ASI 26046 (Corea sanghuang), 26114 (Boolro), and 26115 (HK 1-ho) were grouped with Sanghuangporus sanghuang instead of P. linteus in the inferred phylogeny.

Ganoderma lucidum has a long history of use as a traditional medicine in Asian countries. However, the taxonomy of Ganoderma species remains controversial, since they were initially classified on the basis of their morphological characteristics. Recently, it was proposed that G. lucidum from China be renamed as G. sichuanense or G. lingzhi. In the present study, phylogenetic analysis using the internal transcribed spacer region rDNA sequences of the Ganoderma species indicated that all strains of the Korean 'G. lucidum' clustered into one group together with G. sichuanense and G. lingzhi from China. However, strains from Europe and North American, which were regarded as true G. lucidum, were positioned in a clearly different group. In addition, the average size of the basidiospores from the Korean cultivated Yeongji strains was similar to that of G. lingzhi. Based on these results, we propose that the Korean cultivated Yeongji strains of 'G. lucidum' should be renamed as G. lingzhi.

Physiological activities of 70% methanol, fermented ethanol and hot-water extracts of Pleurotus eryngii were investigated. Free radical scavenging activities of P. eryngii extracts were determined according to the elimination of DPPH radicals. Their nitrite scavenging activity and total polyphenol content were also determined. Amino acid analysis showed that phenylalanine (Phe) and glutamic acid (Glu) are most abundant essential and non-essential amino acids in the analyzed extracts. The hot-water extract of ASI 2394 represented the highest antioxidant activity with the DPPH radical scavenging rate value of 40.97?1.65%. ASI 2820 displayed the superior capacity to eliminate nitrate regardless of extraction solvents. The hot-water extract of ASI 2887 had the highest content of polyphenol. Our results showed that P. eryngii is well qualified as a functional food.

This study was carried out to compare the anti-inflammation effects of various fruiting body of Ganoderma species and Cordyceps militaris, Phelinus linteus extracts. We concentrated Ganoderma species and other medicinal mushrooms by extracting with ethanol. And We made it 100?g/ml concentration. As a result of nitrite scavenging activity, in the contrast to the positive control; Ascorbic acid was 25%, ASI 7080 of Ganoderma species was disappeared up to around 40%. And in the contrast to Ascorbic acid was 55%, ASI 7002 was 78.5% that was the highest anti-inflammation effect in the result of "No assay test". The Cordyceps militaris showed 75% and Hericium erinaceus showed 59.7% of anti-inflammation effect. As a result of the fungus yield control test of TNF-{\alpha} through ELISA method to ASI 7002 of Ganoderma species that showed the highest anti-inflammation, it was reduced as same as LPS non-treatment. We extracted RNA from ASI 7002 Ganoderma species 10, 50, 100?g/ml concentration and LPS 10?g/ml of Raw 264.7 cell. And we tested the expression of iNOS, COX-2 and TNF-a that are kinds of inflammation gene after synthesizing RNA with cDNA. Finally we could find that iNOS, COX-2 and TNF-a were all controlled expression in the result of above experiment.