Kim Sang-uk holds seminars across the globe, day and night. He is a respected scholar whose ubiquity is helping redefine Asian science.
Ination technology, a field in which Korea has already made a big mark, makes his global lecture in molecular biology possible. Wedded, these two disciplines have resulted in the Electronic International Molecular Biology Laboratory.
Known as eIMBL, this online meeting place is an attempt to solve a problem that rises from an opportunity -- an Asian opportunity -- to challenge the traditional global powers in science. America, Europe, Asia. Thats the new science triumvirate, according to Ryoji Noyori, president of Japans largest research institute, RIKEN.
Though grounded in cyberspace, eIMBL is a significant step by the Asia-Pacific International Molecular Biology Network to stitch together Asias diverse science cultures. Jeong-bin Yim, president of the Network, says that 10 years ago he and Ken-ichi Arai of the Institute of Medical Science at the University of Tokyo agreed on bi-lateral cooperation between Korea and Japan in the biological sciences, a plan that quickly grew into a six-member network, attracting other institutions from China and Taipei.
The Network has evolved into a regional organization of 300 member institutions, but Dr. Yim, a professor at Seoul National University, has not lost sight of its ultimate goal of building a brick-and-mortar international institution modeled after the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, in Heidelberg, Germany, a non-profit basic research organization funded by EU states, which has branches in six other cities on the continent. But the task is proving difficult, Yim says.
Unlike Europe, Asia does not have a common community, which would allow funds raised by supporting agencies to be easily transferred among members.
Dr. Yim says that to move toward this ive, Network members have established a virtual laboratory on the internet. But perhaps this fledgling cyber lab is the real opportunity, considering that it might take many years to build the physical structure, considering the likelihood of Asian integration.
What if the electronic lab were actually the lab of the future? Then Korea might be missing a chance to play a larger role in the development of a technology that could accelerate discovery in molecular biology, a field that holds the promise of cures or therapies for many diseases that have been difficult to vanquish.
Groundbreaking insight
The ubiquitous lecturer, Kim Sang-uk, who is a professor at Pohang University of Science and Technology, employs a 3-D representation of a DNA molecule in his online presentation to explain how visualization is important to understanding . His colorful computer-generated projections are a reminder that James Watson got his groundbreaking insight into the helical structure of DNA by assembling, tearing apart and reassembling models he made from pieces of cardboard in his Cambridge University laboratory on a Saturday morning in 1953.
Cyber conferencing through access grid (source from www.eIMBL).Just over a half of a century later Koreas molecular biologists routinely use computers to generate and analyze 3-D representations of molecules, mimicking Watson who twisted, rotated and bent his crude cardboard cutouts, which represented adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine, the chemical compounds that comprise DNA. “Grappling” with a molecule magnifies a scientists most valuable tool -- imagination. But what if scientists could “walk” inside a molecule. Better yet, what if scientists could walk inside a molecule with a colleague --- one who might be thousands of miles away.
Since visualizing molecules in 3-D accelerates drug discovery, virtual labs are indispensable in molecular medicine. Already there are virtual reality rooms, called CAVE (computer assisted virtual environment) where researchers interact with a vast amount of interconnected data in three-demensional complexity. In analyzing data from the human genome, the advantage of CAVE over a two dimensional workspace is gene-disease relationships discerned in seconds not hours.
Last month in Kuala Lumpur at a conference on Virtual Reality in Scientific Application and Learning, scientists from Konkuk University demonstrated a system that presents molecules in 3-D and allows researchers using movements of their arms and legs to handle large computer generated 3-D representations of molecules.
True virtual laboratory
At KIST, the Korea Institute of Science and Technology, scientists have experimented successfully with telexistence, what they call “the concept of overcoming limitations of time and space by presenting a sensation of existence in a virtual sense.” And computer scientists at Ewha Womans University early this year collaborated on an international project that created a CAVE, using avatars.
These projects and others have taken scientists closer to a true virtual molecular laboratory, one where researchers, working together, but many miles apart, can discuss in real time and face-to-face the potential of a newly discovered drug by walking around the chemical compound, looking inside it, tearing it apart and putting it back together.
But some big challenges remain.
Creating a virtual environment is but part of the puzzle. A bigger goal is building true tele-immersion, which combines virtual reality and holograms. Holographic images contain the three-dimensional ination of the original s or scene.
Also, for a virtual lab to work as a real life “physical laboratory” users would have to be able to touch an and feel the feedback sensation. For example, a scientist at a Korean research institute would be able to shake hands with his colleague in China, feeling the friendliness in his grip, as they walk into the virtual lab to disassemble a protein together.
Faster internet
For this to be achieved the internet will have to be a lot faster. Comparatively speaking, if todays internet is as fast as a snail, the internet needed to support the most advanced virtual lab would have to be as swift as the fastest human to transfer the massive amounts of data.
Stereo immersive displays to generate the lifelike images and haptic audio visual environments, or HAVE, that provide the “touchy-feely” capability would also be required. Scientists at the Gwungju Institute of Technology and Korea University are making strides in these areas.
At the projects core would be more powerful computers. New nanomaterials, like bucky balls, promise to make desktop supercomputers a reality someday, and Pohang University of Science and Technology is heavy engaged in related research.
A physical monument to Asian progress in molecular biology would be impressive. But building a laboratory that reflects the summit of achievement in a range of fields, including sensors, supercomputers and the internet, would be a monumental achievement in line with what Korea has already accomplished in ination technology. And it would be a natural progression since with the deciphering of the human genome, biology is now considered an ination science.
