Introductory
After the invention of PCR in 1980s, the Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) platform became the most significant invention in scientific research institutions. It provides huge amounts of sequencing data compared to any other sequencing platforms. However, professional computing skills, Bioinformatics skills, are needed in order to process and analyze big data. Not only computing skills but also knowledge of Biology is required to find meaningful analysis and interpretation of sequencing data.
The research in our laboratory is focused on issues in today’s medical and biological field by producing and analyzing NGS data. Moreover, we challenge to invent software and database that can assist in analyzing data. We believe that it would be the most rewarding if we can contribute others’ research in science field by providing our software.
Details of our research
1. Microbial diversity and evolution
Microorganisms went through evolution for more than 3 billion years to have today’s genetic variety, but mankind only started to understand this by virtue of NGS technology. However, what we were able to learn so far is only a small portion of the world of Microorganisms. Although researchers all over the world are collecting massive amounts of data, we are yet to comprehend this data as a big picture. Our laboratory’s goal is to resolve this issue.
[Constructing a database for Microorganism identification]:
The EzTaxon database, which our lab developed, is used throughout the world by researchers as a standard to identify and categorize bacteria. EzTaxon was referenced more than 2000 times since 2007 (top 0.01% in the field according to Joongang Daily), and it has been reported that its published paper was the most cited in the field of microorganism in South Korea during the past 10 years. We are currently expanding the project by building Databases for Fungi and other Taxa since EzTaxon is only for Bacteria. We are also developing a Database that will cover global microorganism diversity and distribution. We are expecting to understand the Global scale microbial diversity for the first time in history from this research.
[Identifying Microorganism evolution mechanism]:
As stated in our published study (Chun et al., 2009; PNAS), bacteria’s evolution process not only involves mutations but also heavily relies on a mechanism called Lateral Gene Transfer (LGT), where organisms share genes or gene clusters with each other. Due to this discovery it is necessary to revise the concept of Species in Bacteria which was being used for the past 100 years. This research is in progress by comparative genomics between tens of thousands of genome data. Additionally, the project involves building a large database, developing appropriate algorithms, and improving the computation speed, which might take up to hundreds of years, by applying various state of the art Information Technologies. On top of that, we are conducting a research on the pattern and mechanism of Antibiotics resistance spreading which has recently become a problem.
2.Cancer genomics
Cancer can be simply defined as a disease caused by mutated cells that have an uncontrolled rate of cell division. But cancer research is not as simple as its definition. Such complication is due to the different types of mutation and genetic diversity. Our lab is currently working on a variety of research projects, which involves the development of database and algorithms to provide better analytic power for the treatment and the diagnostics. We use the data from RNA-Seq, Exome, and Whole genome sequencing.