Lectures and seminars Guest seminar - Prof. Junho Lee, Seoul National University
Title: Unexpected biology discovered in a small world: Telomere maintenance mechanism and its diversity. April 11th at 13:15 in room Nils Ringertz, Biomedicum.
Welcome to guest seminar by Prof. Junho Lee, Director, Research Institute for Basic Sciences, Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Seoul National University (SNU), Seoul, South Korea
"In this research seminar, I present aspects covering both universality and diversity of life, starting from the worm Caenorhabditis elegans all the way to humans, using telomere-related research results as an example. All eukaryotic cells (but not prokaryotes, including bacteria) have linear chromosomes and have a telomere structure to solve the fundamental problems caused by being linear. The first part of this presentation reports that, contrary to its common name, the structure called telomere can take on a variety of structural forms, and that diversity of telomeres can be found even among nematode worms. The second part is about the telomere maintenance mechanism. I present the evolutionary preservation of the maintenance mechanism that occurs independently of the telomerase enzyme, the alternative telomere maintenance mechanism. Through this presentation, I hope to provide an example of how “life has succeeded in surviving” by mobilizing various methods during the process of evolution".
Bio
Junho Lee's research spans both chromosome biology (with a focus on telomeres) and neurobiology (with a focus on behavioral output); in the worm C. elegans and in mammalian systems. Prior to his present position at SNU, he served as the Dean of the College of Natural Sciences (also at SNU) and was a faculty member at Yonsei University (Seoul, Korea). He was a post-doc at UC Berkeley (CA, USA). He received his PhD at Caltech in Pasadena (CA, USA), and his master and undergraduate education at SNU.
Select Publications
- Lee H, Niida H, Sung S, Lee J (2024) Haplotype-resolved de novo assembly revealed unique characteristics of alternative lengthening of telomeres in mouse embryonic stem cells. Nucleic Acids Res. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkae842. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 39351882.
- Lim J, Kim W, Kim J, Lee J. (2023) Telomeric repeat evolution in the phylum Nematoda revealed by high-quality genome assemblies and subtelomere structures. Genome Research. doi: 10.1101/gr.278124.123. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 37918961.
- Sung S, Kim E, Niida H, Kim C, Lee J. (2023) Distinct characteristics of two types of alternative lengthening of telomeres in mouse embryonic stem cells. Nucleic Acids Res. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkad617. PMID: 37496110.
- Kim E, Kim J, Kim C, Lee J. (2021) Long-read sequencing and de novo genome assemblies reveal complex chromosome end structures caused by telomere dysfunction at the single nucleotide level. Nucleic Acids Res. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkab141. PMID: 33693840.
- Kim C, Sung S, Kim JS, Lee H, Jung Y, Shin S, Kim E, Seo JJ, Kim J, Kim D, Niida H, Kim VN, Park D, Lee J. (2021) Telomeres reforged with non-telomeric sequences in mouse embryonic stem cells. Nature Communications. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-21341-x. PMID: 33597549.
- Kim C, Kim J, Kim S, Cook D, Evans K, Andersen E, and Lee J (2019). Long-read sequencing reveals intra-species tolerance of substantial structural variations and new subtelomere formation in C. elegans. Genome Research, 29(6),1023-1035
- Seo B, Kim C, Hills M, Sung S, Kim H, Kim E, Lim D, Oh H, Choi R, Chun J, Shim J, Lee J (2015). Telomere maintenance through recruitment of internal genomic regions.Nature Communications, 6, 8189.