Seongsoon Park
Professor
Ph.D. McGill University (2003, Montréal, Canada)
postdoc. KTH (2005, Stockholm, Sweden)
Sabbatical (2012, Boston, Harvard Medical School)
Sabbatical (2019, Waterloo, Canada, Wilfrid Laurier University)
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Contact Information:
Department of Chemistry
Sungshin Women’s University
55 Dobong-ro 76ga-gil, Gangbuk-gu
Seoul 01133, Korea
Office: A549
Phone: +82 2 920 7646
Email: spark@sungshin.ac.kr
Laboratory: A543
Phone:+82 2 920 2614
Research
Protocols
Research interests
Nature has developed and used enzymes to carry out reactions for long period. Researchers have used enzymes for organic reactions because enzymes are highly active and selective as catalysts. However, they often met difficulties to use them when they wanted to use unnatural substrates. For example, enzymes often do not show enough activity or selectivity toward unnatural substrates. To tackle these problems, they have monitored and mimicked nature. One of the ways to solve the problems is medium, substrate, or protein engineering. Biocatalysis deals with these research areas.
My research is focused on biocatalysis. Biocatalysis is interdisciplinary research. Based on understanding how an enzyme works, it is an approach to use enzymes in useful reactions and to find a better one for a specific reaction. To find a useful enzyme, one can test commercial enzymes or mutate an enzyme using protein engineering skills. My research group mainly focuses on protein engineering to find better enzymes and to develop new functions into an enzyme. In addition, computer modeling is used to identify the residues to be modified in enzymes and organic synthesis to make substrates.
The students in my research group will learn all these basic technologies such as protein engineering, computer modeling, organic synthesis, and high-throughput screening. These skills are of importance in many industrial areas such as pharmaceutical and synthetic companies.
Current research projects
Development of lipase mutants having unnatural function
Development of cell permeable proteins as a protein carrier
Development of artificial enzymes
Biofunctionalization of metal organic frameworks
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