Dr. Inhwan Hwang has been studying how nascent organellar proteins are delivered to various organelles and subsequently regulated for the purpose of understanding organellar biogenesis and function using Arabidopsis as a model system. Because organelles in eukaryotic cells have no or limited ability to synthesize proteins, they have to import proteins from the cytosol. His group identified a large number of factors, such as ADL6, PI3K, AtRMR1, Rha1, EpsinR1, EpsinR2 and actin, involved in trafficking through endomembrane compartments, thereby contributing greatly to deciphering the trafficking process in plants. While studying the organellar functions, his group elucidated that ABA is rapidly produced by AtBG1 and AtBG2 localized to the ER and vacuole, respectively, and ABA levels are fine-tuned by endocytosis, leading to proper adaptation responses to abiotic stresses. Another important topic is protein targeting to chloroplasts and mitochondria. His group elucidated the design principle and evolution of the transit peptide and presequence of chloroplast and mitochondrial proteins, respectively, and identified and dissected the mechanism and evolutionary process of AKR2s, the targeting factor of chloroplast outer membrane proteins. Now, his group is trying to understand the evolution of chloroplasts and mitochondria by analyzing the design principle and action mechanism of protein import into and targeting to chloroplasts and mitochondria.

Dr Inhwan Hwang is a professor at the Division of Integrative Biosciences and Biotechnology/Department of Life Sciences, POSTECH. He obtained BS and MS degrees at Chemistry Department, Seoul National University, and a PhD degree at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and got postdoctoral training at Genetics Department, Harvard Medical School. As a PI, he published a large number of papers in journals such as Cell, Nature Cell Biology, Developmental Cell, Nature Communicatons, PNAS, Plant Cell, EMBO J, JCB, and now serves as editors in journals such as Plant Cell. He received awards and honors including Ilmac cultural foundation award (Science) in 2005, Inchon foundation award (Science) in 2008 and best scientist award of Korean Society of Plant Biologists in 2015.