A dysbiosis in the human gut microbiota can be one of the leading causes of ulcerative colitis (UC). Accordingly, fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) has been a promising UC treatment because it showed a high success rate of >58.6% (n=29). To investigate whether the microbial composition correlates with the severity of UC, we identified fecal-derived anaerobes to compare the microbial community using a culture-based approach between patients and donors examined. Consequently, we identified 237 anaerobes from the fecal samples of ten donors and five patients. We also performed a microbial community analysis using 16S rRNA gene sequence-based approaches compared to the culturable gut microbes. These results supported the notion that the gut microbial communities of donors differ from those of patients. Although both analyses showed similar community compositions at the phylum levels, the culture-based analysis revealed distinct microbial species between donors and patients. Notably, phylogenomic studies of cultured microorganisms indicate that functional dysbiosis significantly affected the efficacy of FMT for UC patients rather than a shift in the microbial ecosystem. Therefore, the present study suggests that a microbial function-based analysis using culturomics can complement the conventional community-based microbiome analysis to develop microbiome-aided therapeutics for UC.

Plant genome editing is a dream technology that crop breeders wished for. Theoretically, by editing a specific gene in the desired crop, breeders may introduce or remove only the desired trait. The invention of CRISPR technology has made plant genome editing a reality. For example, herbicide-resistant crops, nutrient-rich crops, or disease-resistant crops can now be made by the small modifications of their own DNA without introducing foreign genes. However, despite these successes, plant genome editing has been restricted by the bottleneck of tissue culture method which tends to include highly time-consuming and empirical procedures. For instance, it often takes as much as six months and sometimes more than one year for the transformation of rice and tomato with well-established protocols. In the case of corn and wheat, immature embryos should be consistently supplied for transformation and tissue culture to save the time for experiments. To make matters worse, many plant species, such as chili pepper, are still considered as highly recalcitrant species for tissue culture. Therefore, scientists have been trying to develop a tissue culture-free protocol for more efficient plant genome editing. In this time, I will introduce virus-induced genome editing (VIGE) methods to overcome this limitation. Especially, I will focus on three main issues of VIGE technology in plants: (1) how to express the relatively large size of Cas proteins, (2) how to express guide RNA, and (3) how to increase the efficiency with which viruses are delivered into meristematic cells.

Ubiquitin is a 76-amino acid regulatory protein involved in many important cellular processes. Ubiquitin can be attached to other proteins at either a lysine residue or to the N-terminus by the consecutive actions of E1, E2, and E3 enzymes. Ubiquitin can also be attached to itself, resulting in poly-ubiquitin chains. Ubiquitination affects substrate proteins in different ways, for example by resulting in degradation of the substrate protein by the 26S proteasome. Ubiquitination can be reversed by deubiquitinating enzymes, which either trim or remove ubiquitin chains from proteins. Many proteins involved in either the ubiquitination, deubiquitination or degradation of proteins are implicated in human diseases and are currently under investigation as potential drug targets. In this study, we demonstrated deubiquitinating enzyme USP15 is involved the progression of metabolic diseases, such as obesity and non-alcohol fat liver disease (NAFLD). In the liver, overloaded free fatty acid into hepatocyte, which involve in the fatty acid binding protein4 (FABP4), peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARγ), and perilipin, results in lipid accumulation in hepatocyte. We suggest the finding that deubiquitination of lipid accumulation associated factors, such as FABP4 and perilipin, will provides new insight and therapeutic approach into metabolic diseases. And, we have developed the inhibitors for USP15 for treatment of NAFLD. Taken together, USP15 induces the deubiquitination of lipid-accumulation-associated factors to increase protein stability, which may exacerbate NAFLD by overriding nutrients. Targeting USP15 could be used for the prevention and therapy of chronic liver diseases.

Despite rapid advancements in parenteral drug delivery technologies, the oral route is still favored because of its convenience, low cost, painless and most widely accepted by patients. However, some drugs have poor oral bioavailability due to low water solubility, limited stability, and rapid clearance and metabolism. Oral drug delivery system is, therefore, developed to deliver drug to target sites for enhanced bioavailability and reduced side effects. However, commercial oral tablets are also limited by their poor absorption profiles due to variability in their gastrointestinal transit times. Thus, patients are expected to adhere strictly to their medication regime to reap the full pharmacological benefits for their medical conditions. In a few past decades, there was an increasing interest in lipid based drug delivery systems, such as nanostructured lipid carriers (NLC), for topical application of other imidazoles. NLC exerts an enhanced penetration effect by reducing skin resistance via intercalation of NLCs into the stratum corneum. Besides, the solid lipid matrix in NLC offers the possibility of controlled drug release. However, despite these advantages, NLCs have several limitations in the topical application. For the topical application of NLCs, NLCs are also generally prepared as conventional topical formulations. Therefore, a more patient friendly formulation would be required, which is easy to apply and is able to deliver the drug over longer periods (> 24 h). Treatment of skin infection by dermatophytes is difficult due to the inconvenience and low efficacy of conventional topical formulations. Here, the potential of a film-forming system (FFS) hybridized with nanostructured lipid carriers (NLC) was demonstrated in this work.

The development of pharmabiotics, which are commensal microorganisms (or their metabolites) that can be used for medical purposes such as prevention or treatment of infectious or non-infectious diseases, is the latest practical application of microbiome research. We are in the process of finding pharmabiotic candidates to be used for gastric illnesses including gastric cancer, which is one of the leading causes of cancer-related mortality in Korea. Results of the gastric microbiota analysis of patients and non-patients will be used to derive microbial species that are characteristic of each group. At the same time, we have been constructing a humanized mouse model of gastric cancer to test the efficacy of selected pharmabiotic strains. In another effort, we conducted a research to uncover a plant-pharmabiotic strain that contributes to plant disease resistance. By comparing the rhizospheric microbiomes of two tomato cultivars either resistant or susceptible to a soil-borne bacterial wilt pathogen, the genome of a Flavobacteriaceae bacterium predominant in the resistant plant's rhizosphere was elucidated. Then, it was successfully cultivated in vitro and proven to suppress the disease development in vivo. This presentation will provide an overview of our strategies and progresses to develop pharmabiotics that are effective in human or plant diseases.

As we have seen in the case of the COVID-19, the acquisition and timely distribution of biological resources and its information have had a significant impact on human health. By importance of biological resources, Korea has been effort on the acquisition of biological resources from 2000s. As a result of quantity oriented policy, 11,840,644 biological resources had been acquired in Korea by 2019. The 3rd national strategic plan for biological resources is established and published in May, 2020. The main changes are the acquisition of biological information and the utilization of biological resource. Due to the utilization of biological resources, biological resources centers are clustered in 14 units such as human tissues, pathogens, cell lines, experimental animal model, microorganism, plant extracts and so on. Due to the strategy of biological resources, 14 biological resources clusters and 1 general support unit are organized and work together for enhancing the utilization of biological resources in Korea. In the presentation, I introduce the 3rd national strategic plan for biological resources and the implementation plan. In addition, I introduce roles and plans of the general support for helping utilization of biological resources.

When starting a biotechcompany, a step-by-step strategy is required for company growth. And entrepreneurs need to know that corporate profit is more important than sales, and corporate value is more important than corporate profit. In the end, the corporate value is evaluated by the members that make up the company, so it can be said that the members of the company are the most important. In the following, let's look at the case of the BIO-FD&C company that is a technology based business expansion, and look at plant cell culture technology. In plant cell culture technology, there is a limitation in the amount of expression of biomass and phytochemicals or metabolites depending on the rate of division of plant cell lines. The new plant cell culture technology is an upgrade of the plant cell culture process technology. When cultivating in a bioreactor, it is a technology that increases phytochemicals or metabolites by inducing physical stimulation through frequencies of specific wavelengths. This new technology is a plant capable of radiofrequency processing when culturing plant cells through a radiofrequency processing device that attaches an electrode that can apply a radiofrequency in the bioreactor and adjusts the wavelength range, shape, intensity, and processing interval outside the bioreactor. The technology was named SMART-RC² which represents Secondary Metabolite Accumulated Radiofrequency Technology with Recontrolled Cell Culture. We invent cell culture systems and use this technology to increase the expression levels of specific phytochemicals and metabolites. This technology is a technology that increases biomass and accumulates active ingredients such as secondary metabolites in plant cells when culturing plant cells using a device system that controls a specific frequency in a bioreactor equipped with a radiofrequency electrode. The SMART-RC² technology can be useful for research on specific phytochemicals, growth factors, and antibody/vaccine production in plant cells. It can obtain more diverse and useful results when combined with an elicitor treatment for increasing useful products in plant cell culture. It can make a significant contribution to the development of the bio-health care and pharmaceutical industries, as well as the scalability based on SMART-RC² technology.