Gyoo Yeol/JUNG

Professor
​Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH)

Gyoo Yeol Jung is Vice President of Academic Affairs as well as a Professor of Department of Chemical  Engineering and Interdisciplinary School of Bioscience and Bioengineering (I-Bio Program),  POSTECH of Korea. He received his Ph.D. degree from Seoul National University of Korea and did his  postdoc research at MIT with professor Gregory Stephanopoulos. His research is focused on Synthetic  Biology and Genetic Analysis System. He published a number of papers in the premier journals  including “Science”, “Nature Biomedical Engineering” and “Nature Communications”. He was  awarded a number of awards including Best Researcher Award by Korea Society of Biotechnology and  Bioengineering. Dr. Jung is an Associate Editor of Journal of Biological Engineering and Biotechnology  and Bioprocess Engineering, and editorial board member of Metabolic Engineering, Scientific Reports,  Electrophoresis, etc.

Speech title & Synopsis

Macroalgae Biorefinery: New opportunity of Bioeconomy in East Asia

Bio-based chemicals industry has been attracting great attention as the most environmentally  benign chemical production route. However, feedstock cost and availability are known to be a  important part to develop a economically feasible bioprocess. In East Asia region, especially,  feedstocks obtained from land area including starch and lignocellulosic biomass are not available  enough for bioindustry due to the high population. On the other hand, marine biomass such as  marcoalgae is mostly produced in East Asia. Therefore, marine biorefinery based on marine  biomass should have the high opportunity in this region. Although brown macroalgae has an  enormous potential as an alternative feedstock, its utilization by conventional microbial platforms  has been limited due to the inability to metabolize one of the major carbohydrate, alginate. Here,  we isolated Vibrio sp. dhg, a novel, fast-growing bacterium that can efficiently assimilate alginate.  Based on systematic characterization of the genomic information of Vibrio sp. dhg, we were able  to develop a genetic toolbox for its engineering, and successfully demonstrated its ability to  rapidly produce a broad spectrum of chemicals (ethanol, 2, 3-butanediol, and lycopene) from  brown macroalgae sugar mixtures with a high productivity and yield. Collectively, the Vibrio sp.  dhg strain is a powerful platform for the conversion of brown macroalgae sugars whose usage  will dramatically accelerate the production of value-added biochemicals.