On October 31, KAIST announced that Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering was appointed as an Associate Editor of a new peer-reviewed research journal Synthetic Biology, which will be published starting next year.
 
Professor Lee and Professor Jeff Hasty from the University of California, San Diego will review submitted papers and shape the publication's future by setting editorial policies as a member of the editorial board.
 
Synthetic biology is an emerging technology whose goal is to further develop biology as a substrate for engineering by adapting concepts developed in other areas of engineering. It can allow for designing of new types of cellular metabolism and a regulating system through the introduction, deletion and modification of metabolic pathways. It is expected that new drugs and chemical substances developed using synthetic biology could protect the environment and improve our quality of life.
 
Professor Lee founded "systems metabolic engineering," in which engineering targets are determined by considering the entire metabolic and regulatory networks together with fermentation, recovery and purification processes. He has published more than 380 papers and received many awards including the 2011 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award for his achievements in synthetic biology.
 
Professor Lee shared his thoughts saying, "Journals published by the American Chemical Society are very influential in their relevant fields of study. I would like to help Korean researchers to make contributions in synthetic biology and publish the results on Synthetic Biology."
 
Synthetic Biology will focus on the synthesis of new genetic circuits and gene products; computational methods in the design of systems; and integrative approaches to understand disease and metabolism.
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