Finding out when humans age… Samsung support research team develops’life phenomenon occurrence time’ measurement technology

Input 2021.02.04 10:03

The research team of Professor Hyung-beom Kim of Yonsei University College of Medicine, supported by the Samsung Future Technology Promotion Project, developed the world’s first system to measure the time when life phenomena occurred by changing the DNA base sequence, and published a related paper on the 3rd (local time) in world-class life sciences. Published in the specialized journal Cell.

The research team was jointly conducted by the research team of Professors Jeong In-kyung and Cho Seong-rae of the College of Medicine at Yonsei University, Professor Tae-young Park of the Department of Applied Statistics at Yonsei University, and Professor Sung-ro Yoon of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Seoul National University.

‘Recording of elapsed time and temporal information about biological events using Cas9’, a paper containing the results of their research, causes biological phenomena such as disease and aging. It was highly evaluated by the academic world for laying the foundation for accurately grasping when to do it.

The diseased organism changes its gene (DNA) sequence. Accurately measuring the time point at which the nucleotide sequence changes can be applied to the treatment according to disease occurrence and progression. Prof. Hyungbeom Kim’s research team found that as time elapses, as the DNA sequence begins to change, the normal sequence decreases and the mutation increases exponentially. To this end, 23,940 different nucleotide sequences were exposed to toxic substances, or heat shock was applied. This is a continuous follow-up observation of the mutation that occurred.

Prof. Kim’s research team did not stop at this, and even built a system that detects the timing of changes in DNA sequences that occur when living organisms are exposed to various environments. As a result of experimenting with mice, the incidence of error at the time of grasping the change point was very accurate, around 10%. Professor Kim said, “By using the same principle as the radioisotope measurement method that measures the age of fossils, it is now possible to accurately grasp the time course of various phenomena occurring in living organisms.”
“It can be used for most biological research, such as tracking and aging.”

Prof. Kim has completed the registration of a domestic patent related to this research, and is pending patent applications abroad, including the United States. This research has been selected and supported as a project of the Samsung Future Promotion Project since June 2017.