Chair : Yoon Ki Kim, Ph.D. (Korea University, Korea)

Chair : Sung Wook Chi, Ph.D. (Korea University, Korea)

Chair : Ja-Hyun Baik, Ph.D. (Korea University, Korea)
Dae-Jin Yun, Ph.D. (Konkuk University, Korea)

Transposable elements also known as "jumping genes" or transposons, are sequences of DNA that move (or jump) from one location in the genome to another. Transposable elements have been considered only as parasites or selfish elements in living organisms throughout the whole life phenomenon. The importance of transposable elements has become more evident as the sequence of various species has been revealed after the Human Genome Project. In fact, it has been found that the gene encoding protein expresses about 2% of the whole genome, while the transposable elements and their DNA fragments account for about 50% of the total genome sequence of many primates, including humans. In particular, it has been shown that transposable elements are contained in diverse genomes of various species ranging from those common to prokaryotes and eukaryotes, to those specific to mammals and primates, and revealed as the factor in the evolution and the differentiation of living things. In addition, studies on transposable elements have been actively conducted as direct causes of various genetic diseases including cancers. Through the identifying the function of the transposable elements, it can be a clue to treat various diseases that are caused by mobile genetic elements. This symposium deals with recent studies about transposable elements from evolution to diseases.

The microbiome, comprised of the microbiota and its collective genomes called the metagenome, is an integral part of our body. Members of the microbiota include bacteria, archaea, microbial eukaryotes (protists, fungi, etc.), and respective viruses. Recent studies reveal that a myriad of members, mutualistic, commensal, or pathogenic, of the human microbiome play pivotal roles in health and disease by producing diverse macromolecules and metabolites. Not only are they important in nutrient digestion and gastrointestinal health, but they are also intimately and intricately involved in metabolism, immunity, development, circulation, and behavior, and modulate them in many ways. Some of the diseases affected by the microbiome include metabolic diseases (obesity, type 2 diabetes), immune-related diseases (inflammatory bowel disease, asthma, rheumatoid arthritis), gastrointestinal diseases, liver diseases, cardiovascular disease, various cancers, and neural/mental disorders. In the session, recent progress and achievements in human microbiome research and the consequent discovery of pharmabiotics candidates that are derived from the human microbiome and have pharmacological efficacy for maintaining health or treating diseases will be reported and prospects for further commercial development of probiotics and pharmabiotics, natural or genetically modified, will be discussed.

Cancer metabolism research has become a rapidly expanding field as researchers try to understand how cancer cells acquire the ability to alter metabolic pathways in order to meet the systemic needs of malignant tumors to sustain uncontrolled proliferation, such as mitochondrial bioenergetics, macromolecule biosynthesis, and redox homeostasis. Understanding the metabolic reprogramming of cancer cells provide new and exciting opportunities for cancer research and therapy. This symposium will highlight recent discoveries and advances in the field while providing an excellent opportunity to share knowledge and methodology with other researchers.

Recent advances in high-throughput transcriptome sequencing and RNA-aided transcriptome editing technologies have facilitated the discovery of new principles and mechanisms of post-transcriptional and translational regulation in gene expression. Cas-based RNA editing systems led to identify functional coding and non-coding elements that control translation and RNA degradation in the nucleotide level. In this symposium, speakers will present their fascinating works, regarding regulatory roles of small RNAs and their applications along with cas-based RNA modification system to uncover new mechanisms of post-transcriptional and translational regulation.

Preserving genomic integrity is one of central task for all organisms. Evolutionary conserved DNA replication, repair, recombination, and DNA damage response pathways play a pivotal role in preserving genomic integrity. Mis-regulations of these pathways result in many genetic disorders including cancers and accelerating aging. Therefore, understanding detail molecular mechanisms of DNA replication, repair, recombination and DNA damage response pathways will reveal progression of genetic disorders and aging processes. In the Genomic Integrity Symposium, we will have speakers who are experts in DNA repair and DNA damage response pathways. They will present their most recent studies in dissecting molecular mechanisms of DNA repair, identification of new players in DNA damage responses, and potential links of DNA repair to genetic disorders and other cellular processes.

Cilia are organelles that extend from the surface of most mammalian cells. Cilia are of profound medical importance. When ciliary functions are disturbed, various human diseases such as kidney cysts, cancer, retinal degeneration, and obesity are induced. The understanding of cilia has increased in depth and breadth as we learn more about these remarkable organelles. This session will cover basic topics in ciliary structure/transport, ciliary dynamics and signaling, cilia in the nervous system, and human ciliopathies. This session is organized by the Cilia and flagella section of The Korean Society for Molecular and Cellular Biology and will bring together basic scientists and clinicians, resulting in crosstalk, collaborations, and innovative new directions.

Hippo signaling is a rapidly emerging field over last two decades, especially the numbers of publications are exponentially growing in recent years. Initially, Hippo signaling has been established as a key regulatory signaling pathway for the question how individual animals maintain their own size and the organ is adjusted to the proper size during development and regeneration. However, identification of core regulatory components, which are highly conserved in metazoa, subsequently led to the findings for involvement of Hippo signaling in diverse human diseases such as cancer. Recent publications show that Hippo signaling controls diverse biological processes by interacting with other well-known signaling pathways such as Notch, TGF-β, and Wnt. In this symposium, speakers will discuss the roles of Hippo signaling for the tumorigenesis and its clinical relevance.

The chemical senses, including olfaction and gustation, provide important information that determines animal behavior such as ingestion. Detection of the external environment, collation and perception of this information, and the manifestation of an appropriate behavioral response also provide a major model system to study neural circuits. This symposium will include a broad scope of studies ranging from research on the peripheral nervous system of the fruit fly to studies in mammals.

Structural biology. such as X-ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy has contributed to drug development using structural information derived from complexes of protein/drug candidates. Very recently cryo-electron microscopy and serial femtosecond X-ray crystallography have been developed and proven as important methods to derive structural information of big macromolecules for drug development. Particularly, the X-ray free electron laser (XFEL) crystallography allows X-ray diffraction data recording and structure determination for smaller crystals at room temperature, providing structural information under physiological condition. In addition, time-resolved XFEL technique has been proven as a key method to dissect dynamic profile and conformational switch of the macromolecules, especially drug targetable GPCRs and membrane proteins. In this session, we are going to discuss about current progress and techniques of Bio-XFEL as a novel technology for drug development.

A neuron has an extreme cellular morphology with a long axon and branched dendrites. Astrocytes also have glial processes with diverse morphology. It is believed that cytoskeleton plays a key role in morphogenesis of neurons and glial cells. Nonetheless, it remains to be investigated how cytoskeletons are assembled and regulated for proper morphogenesis of neurons and glial cells. In this session, Drs. Jens Luders and Kunsoo Rhee will present roles of microtubules during neuronal and glial differentiation, respectively. Dr. Seungbok Lee will present actin functions in axon extension and synapse formation. Finally, Dr. Hosung Jung will discuss neuronal migration.

This symposium is about researches using various model systems including Drosophila, C. elegans, Xenopus, and Zebra fish. By increasing the overall understanding on using various model systems, it is expected that a new research approach in your own system can be easily developed. In this symposium, recent model animal studies will be presented, ranging from animal level processes such as longevity control to cellular level processes such as signaling and ploidy control.

The secretion of exosomes known as extracellular vesicles is an evolutionarily conserved cellular process occurring from simple organisms to complex multicellular organisms. Recent progress in this area has revealed that exosomes play multiple roles in intercellular and interkingdom communication, suggesting that exosomes are NanoCosmos, i.e., extracellular organelles that play diverse roles in intercellular communication. This session will highlight emerging exosome biology covering from concept of exosome-mediated intercellular communication, comprehensive aspects of exosomes including components, biogenesis, and diverse functions that should facilitate further applications, especially to develop diagnostic tools and therapeutics.

The democratization of high content screening (HCS) platforms is a reality for pharmaceutical companies as well as research institutes. High-resolution microscopes, combined with the specificity of fluorescent probes for labeling targets of interest, provide accurate determination of protein localization and valuable information for understanding the molecular mechanisms that underlie the cell functions. Such method is used increasingly for primary screening, target identification, and lead generations by the pharmaceutical industry. Due to the integration of relevant cellular disease models, and increasing user demand, HCS imaging systems are constantly evolving to facilitate the quantification of complex biological models (micro-tissues, organoid, mix-cultures, spheroids). As such, we can anticipate that HCS to play an essential analytical role in cell-based assay, and become a routine platform in academic laboratories.

Functional discovery of novel genes in the diverse cellular context offers translational usage. We have witnessed numerous examples that development of therapeutic measures rely on biological findings of signaling networks. Furthermore, first-in-class therapeutic approaches often derive from such novel or serendipitous findings. Therefore, this symposium aims to share examples how functional studies of genes evolve toward therapeutic area and wishes that these endeavors contribute to demolish barriers between pure and applicatory researches.

Most human diseases are caused by inflammation and disturbance of the immune system. This symposium will introduce the efficacy and mechanism of action of endogenous anti-inflammatory substances, which provide insights into the next generation of inflammation treatment and development of immunomodulators.

Liver malignancy involves chronic inflammation and malignant metabolic disorder, eventually leading to fibrosis, cirrhosis, and cancer, so that understanding of metabolic regulations in mechanistically molecular levels can be important for the preventive and therapeutic purposes. Since the diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) can be usually available for late stages, earlier diagnosis of the live malignancy that involves abnormal metabolic activities can be further critical for the clinical benefits. Metabolic activities to regulate the cellular availability of amino acid, glucose, and lipid can be malignant, resulting from abnormal signaling activity and trafficking of molecules that are involved in the metabolic regulations, prior to HCC development. Therefore, theses let this session focus on certain molecules that are shown to be involved in liver diseases including HCC, and support for the needs of anti-malignant metabolism for anti-hepatic cancer strategy.

Understanding the cellular and synaptic mechanisms within neural circuits underlying cognition is a fundamental goal of science. To achieve this goal, we need deep appreciation of behavior as well as a detailed knowledge of the underlying underpinnings. Pioneering scientists have established the related fields of behavioral genetics and neural plasticity toward genuine secrets of animal behaviors for investigating cognitive functions such as memory, reward and addiction etc. The field of molecular and cellular cognition has recently been fueled by powerful new technical tools such as optogenetics. At this symposium, leading researchers studying neural circuit and plasticity for cognition (reward and memory) will present exciting new results and prompt better understanding for how neural circuits may underlie reward and memory.

Plant responses to environmental stresses are governed by complex molecular and biochemical signal transduction processes, which act in coordination to determine tolerance or sensitivity at the whole-plant level. The abiotic stresses involve homeostatic biochemical reactions, recorded in terms of cellular information transfer at various levels of gene expression including transcriptional, translational, and post-translational regulation. Over the last decade, clues have emerged concerning these regulatory circuits and their physiological consequences. Only recently have emerged the tools to study the stress response in integration. Through this symposium, we seek to understand how plants perceive and respond to environmental changes.

Recent technological advances in imaging modalities and analytical approaches provide accurate measurements not only to quantitatively test a certain hypothesis but also to deeply understand hierarchical interactions in biological systems. To date, quantitative approaches have been playing progressively important roles by providing assessable models in molecular and cell biology. This symposium will introduce new innovative approaches, including super-resolution imaging methods very useful for cell biology and quantitative single molecule techniques valuable for molecular biology. This session will inform biologists of the current advances, and the organizer hopes that this session facilitates new collaborations between biologists and biophysisists for quantitative biological researches.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is one of the most life-threatening forms of dementia. However, by far there is no proper therapeutic medicine as well as no precise diagnostic method. Currently discovering an optimal biomarker is mostly required for preparing coming AD era, particularly for early detection. In this symposia, we invite world-renowned scientists for AD research in the domestic and international. Currently, they are deeply working on to discover promising AD biomarker as well as genetic factors. This symposium will give the audience the latest status for biomarker discovery and future direction for AD research.

Ras-related GTP-binding proteins, Rho GTPases including RhoA, Cdc42 and Rac1/2 play a variety of roles in cellular functions including cytoskeletal dynamics, regulation of cell morphology, cell migration and transcription, and tumorigenesis. Activity of Rho GTPases is regulated; GTP-bound active and GDP-bound inactive forms are alternatively converted through regulatory proteins including guanine nucleotide exchange factors (GEFs), GTPase activating proteins (GAPs), guanine nucleotide dissociation inhibitors (GDIs), and GDI displacement factors (GDFs). In particular, overexpression and mutation of RhoA GTPase are related to the tumorigenesis. Transcriptional regulation of RhoA is controlled by several transcriptional factors and miRNAs in response to several stimuli. In addition, post-translational modification RhoA including Tyr phosphorylation is also critical tumorigenesis. Therefore, 3D structure analysis of Rho GTPases and their binding partner proteins has been vigorously studied. In this symposium, speakers will present these issues.

Recent advances in culture technology and developmental cell biology enable induced-pluripotent and adult stem cells to be differentiated into self-organizing organoids which resemble key structural and functional properties of organs, such as brain, lung, gut, kidney, ear, tongue, and so on. Therefore, organoids can be utilized to model organ development and diseases, and has the potential to revolutionize the drug response prediction, drug discovery, and regenerative medicine. This symposium will bring together the leading researchers in this filed to enhance our understanding of how organoids can be formed and maintained, how they can be used to study development and diseases, and how we might eventually use them in regenerative medicine.

The major feature that differentiates plants from animals is the dynamic change of their developmental programs in response to intrinsic and extrinsic stimuli. This symposium is intended to provide novel aspects in dynamic molecular rewiring during plant growth and development.