기초과학융합연구소

2023학년도 1학기 기초과학융합연구소 월례세미나를 안내해 드립니다.

•연사: 김대환 교수(University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center)

•제목: Life virtualization platform: a complete programming language to build & execute in silico organisms

•초록: I will discuss how to build and execute in silico organisms. My lab has developed a complete computer programming language, called L++, for researchers to write code that precisely and unambiguously describes biosystems at a very detailed resolution. With this language, computers will be able to understand, parse, and translate the code into a virtual organism. The genome, consisting of A, C, G, and T, serves as life’s blueprint, which is read and processed by cells. However, the genome does not readily lend itself to human readability, understanding, or modification. L++ is specifically designed for biologists with its intuitive syntax, which will take less than one day for biologists to learn and use. Using the L++ language, we have begun to write 100+ biochemical pathways of E. coli in an estimated 500 pages of L++ code as a reusable template by integrating research on E. coli from an array of heterogeneous databases and resources. We plan to use data from 80% of these sources when building the E. coli code, and use the remaining 20% to cross validate the prediction capability of the E. coli code. Researchers can also use and repurpose this code through simulations and visualizations, allowing them to efficiently create biochemical pathways, reprogram cells, and design and eventually create organisms. Ultimately, our goal is to reverse engineer our knowledge of biology to reconstruct and execute human code and to systematically investigate and decipher complex biological interactions that lead to human diseases.