Professor of Chemical Engineering

Research Areas

Biomolecular & Bioprocess

Research Interests

REFOLDING OF IB PROTEINS USING FOLDING-LIKE-REFOLDING STRATEGY
Refolding is a key issue to determine the overall success of therapeutic protein production via IB route using E. coli. Regardless of target protein property and process scale, protein concentration at the time of refolding is a crucial factor to determine refolding efficiency. In this context, practical engineering approach to improve refolding efficiency would be to create an environment to control protein interaction in a defined manner. Deposition of denatured protein onto a surface is expected to minimize mutual interactions of proteins. Surface refolding can be easily integrated with the novel in-house IB processing scheme without increasing the process complexity while achieving significant process intensification. Furthermore, we recently developed a novel refolding strategy (i.e. folding-like-refolding) harnessing refolding cocktail comprising unpurified chaperones to effectively mimic in vivo protein quality control network. It is expected that this new strategy will provide an economical viable refolding method for a wide variety of refolding recalcitrant proteins.

DESIGN OF NANOSTRUCTURED MATERIALS VIA PROTEIN ENGINEERING
This research aims to design various nanostructured materials guided by a nanoscale novel protein/DNA scaffold as an alternative to existing physicochemical approaches. Phage display or SELEX technique has found increasing applications in the screening of random peptide/aptamer sequences exhibiting specific affinity towards many interesting functional inorganic materials. Identified aptamers of desired characteristics are fused to generate novel proteins without affecting the structure or function of the original protein. The engineered proteins are expected to facilitate the nanopatterning of functional inorganics in a controlled manner. The peptide or aptamer also can find interesting application in affinity ligand design or biomineralization of hybrid functional materials.

Selected Publications

1.Kim SE, Su W, Cho MS, Lee Y, Choe WS. Anal Biochem (2012) 424, 12

2.Shin MJ, Tan L, MH Jeong, Kim Jh, Choe WS J Chromatogr A (2011) 1218, 5273

3.Niam R, Kim DS, Nguyen T, Tan L, Kim CW, Yoo IK. Choe WS.
J Chromatogr A (2010), 1217, 5940

4.Chen H, Su X, Neoh KG, Choe WS. Adv Funct Mater (2009) 19, 1186

5.Nian R, Tan, Yoo IK, Choe WS. J Chromatogr A (2008) 1214, 47

Professional Experience

생물공정 팀장(두산기술원, 1992-1998),
박사후연구원 (워싱턴대학,2002-2003)
조교수(국립싱가폴대학교, 2003-2005),
조교수 (성균관대학교, 2005-2008)
부교수 (성균관대학교, 2008-현재),
겸임교수 (성균나노과학기술원, 2010-현재)
겸임교수 (삼성융합의과학원, 2011-현재)