Professor Youngsook Lee (Division of Integrative Biology and Biotechnology) and her team have found a transporter carrying abscisic acid (ABA), a stress hormone, synthesized in plants undergoing stresses like extreme climate or salinity. Their results integrate ABA dependent signaling and transport processes, and it is expected to open a new venture for the engineering of drought-tolerant plants.They have succeeded to find the existence of transporter ABCG40 that can transport ABA, a hormone known to be produced in responses to environmental stress such as extreme temperatures, high salinity, ..

Professor Hyung Joon Cha (Department of Chemical Engineering) and his team have succeeded in developing a highly condensed liquid bio-adhesive material based on the mussel adhesive proteins (MAPs) by complex coacervation, which shows superior adhesive properties. Recently, MAPs found in byssus of mussel, have come to be recognized as useful biomaterials for direct use as bio-adhesives in medical applications and in the engineering of new marine-inspired adhesive materials. As purified natural MAPs are difficult to obtain, it has not been possible to experimentally validate the complex coacerva..

Professor Jaesung Park (Department of Mechanical Engineering) and Korea- America co-research team including medical school of Harvard University have succeeded in observing the mutual interaction between the layers of primary hepatocyte (liver) cells and non-parenchymal (functional) cells created by the stencil created by the microfabrication techniques.To treat damaged or diseased liver tissue, hepatic tissue engineering has been studied as a new therapeutic approach. The reconstruction of functional hepatic tissue mainly depends on the ability to control factors that influence the cell envir..

Many studies have addressed the effect of sugar in the diet on obesity and diabetes. Professor Seung-Jae Lee (Division of IT Convergence Engineering, Department of Life Science, School of Interdisciplinary Bioscience and Bioengineering) and his group report that it might also be taking years off the life span.Professor Lee’s group, in collaboration with Professor Cynthia Kenyon of the University of California, San Francisco, discovered that glucose inhibits the activities of the glycerol channel in C. elegans, shortening the life span of the worm by about 20 percent. The group traces the..

Despite its potential risks, general anesthesia and how it leads human brain to unconsciousness is still not known. A POSTECH research group has been investigating the nature of consciousness as well as control of the level of consciousness through anesthesia, whose effort has drawn much attention of the academia.Professor Seunghwan Kim (Department of Physics) and his team, in a joint study with POSTECH graduate Doctor UnCheol Lee of University of Michigan and a Seoul Asan Medical Center team, have presented evidence that the transition from consciousness to unconsciousness occurs by the suppr..

Professor Kijung Yong (Department of Chemical Engineering) and his group have succeeded in developing an original technology utilizing the lotus effect, which may be used toward development of a variety of applications using coated surfaces.Leaves of the lotus flower have very high water repellency due to the complex, nanoscopic structure of their surface. Superhydrophobic nanostructured surfaces, such as the lotus leaf, have shown potential for a variety of applications, including microfluidics in biotechnology, fog-resistant coatings, impermeable textiles, anti-contamination, and self-cleani..

Professor Jin Kon Kim (Department of Chemical Engineering) and his group have succeeded in developing macromolecule materials which use pressure to store terabit-scale ultrahigh-density data at room temperature, as well as the supporting technology to write, read, and erase the ultrahighdensity array of nanoscopic indentations.The existing technology for fabricating nanopatterns, developed by IBM, was based on a thermomechanical recording system, using a heated atomic force microscope (AFM) tip at about 350°C. However, in addition to the difficulties in the fabrication of heated AFM tips, ..

Professor Kyo Han Ahn (Department of Chemistry) and his team, in a joint research with a Yonsei University group, have developed a new probe for mercury that can be used for imaging organs in living organisms.Mercury is a highly toxic and widespread pollutant, but the existing fluorescence probes for it mostly detected only its inorganic forms. The element is commonly found in organic forms which are much more toxic than inorganic mercury as their lipophilicity allows them to cross biological membranes. Consequently, new ways of detecting organic mercury species, particularly in organisms, was..

Professor Taihyun Chang (Department of Chemistry) and his group have developed toroidal micelles of uniform size from diblock copolymers.Block copoloymers can spontaneously self-assemble in a selective solvent to form micelles of various morphologies such as spherical micelles, cylindrical micelles, and vesicles. Recently, the variety of micellar shapes have been expanded to unconventional forms including toroids, tubes, disks, helices, and other complex forms.Although the toroid-shaped micelles have been reported earlier, the applicability of the toroid structure had been low due to the diffi..

In the Steven Spielberg movie A.I., robots not only resemble humans in looks but read their facial expressions, reacting accordingly. With the new technology developed by Professor Daijin Kim (Department of Computer Science and Engineering) and his group, the movie may soon become reality.Automatic expression analysis is difficult because people’s faces vary so much. Existing software could effectively recognize only extreme expressions, which is not particularly helpful in real-life situations. But the system developed by Professor Kim’s team recognizes even slight facial movement..