KOSEN 한인과학기술자네트워크

Why Our Lab!

Welcome to our laboratory, where chemists and biologist work together to understand how origin of life at the molecular level helps to shape the living world. These web pages describe some of our recent work and provide links to our published papers. Inspired by what origin of life in nature, we strive to put those same forces to work in the laboratory to develop compounds that have practical benefit.

Sincerely,

Young Jun. Seo
 

Our Experience Shows!

My research have focused on the synthesis and applications of functional nucleotides.  This work led me to further concentrate on developing a new probing system that detects single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), and DNA structural changes, including G-quadruplexes, i-motifs, and B-Z transitions. I also have developed the novel oligonucleotide delivery system using Cholesterol in a human hepatoma cell line to monitoring the RNA dynamics. At the Scripps Research Institute, my research focused on expanding the genetic alphabet and code, utilizing synthetic unnatural bases with an ultimate aim of implementing this principle in the central dogma of molecular biology. This is a challenging problem requiring a combination of synthetic chemistry, biochemistry, and molecular biology, and requires the identification of an unnatural base pair that is well replicated and transcribed into RNA by DNA and RNA polymerases, respectively. I also developed enzymatically site-selectively modified DNA/RNA that has the potential to revolutionize the ubiquitous biotechnological-, medical-, and materials-applications of oligonucleotides. I moved to Brookhaven National Laboratory to extend my researches in synthetic biology to study the human brain using Positron Emission Tomography under Dr. Joanna S. Fowler. My research focused on in vivo brain imaging of epigenetic processes targeting the HDAC enzyme.