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Professor Choi, Hui-Uk Published His 6th Paper on Nature
국제교류부 | 2013-06-07 | 조회 4361
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Professor Choi, Hui-Uk of CBNU is receiving academic attentions from the world for his research discovers visual transmitter substances and its structures in eyes for the world's first.
Prof. Choi discovered that arrestin, the biomolecule living in eyes, becomes active when paired with metarhodopsin II, and he posted his research on revealing the structure of this bio-process in the lasted edition of Nature (doi:10.1038/nature12133). Until Prof. Choi, arrestin's structure was only known as inactive. Prof. Choi celebrated his 6th addition to Nature including the latest one.
He has been publishing his research on Opsin & Rhodopsin's -molecules responsible for our visible ability- role and structure, and on structure-changing metarhodopsin II on the Nature magazine.
As light comes into our eyes, rhodopsin detects it. Rhodopsin then transforms into metarhodopsin II which enables us to see by activating Protein G transmits chemical signal to brain to cue our vision.
In plain language, the cycle of 'rhodopsin -> metarhodopsin II -> rhodopsin -> metarhodopsin II -> …' keeps repeating in the middle of our visionary process.
In this process, metarhodopsin II must return quickly to rhodopsin after it activates and then deactivates Protein G. Arrestin plays a role in deactivating Protein G.
If arrestin fails to deactivate Protein G, chemical signal would keep transmitting continuously. This means a flash of light will be recognized as a continuing one.
Prof. Choi's latest research laid a foundation explaining how arrestin pairs with an active metarhodopsin II, stops transmitting the visual signals and returns to rhodopsin.
This research is a result of the 2 years of hard work of Prof. Choi and his student, Kim, Yong-Joo who is currently in Humboldt University, Germany. Prof. Choi has posted his research on Nature discovering inactive arrestin structure in 1998, two articles in 2008, an article discovering metarhodopsin II's structure in 2011. Through his latest addition to Nature, he proved himself to be the leading figure in the Visual Sensory Transmitter area.
This paper was placed in the magazine between Nobel Prize winner RJ Lefkowitz and BK Kobilka's V2 vasopressin receptor research and Fab30 research back to back.
These two papers are receiving much attention for its study on different arrestin activity and structure, and the results were viewed greatly in 'New Views' section in Nature.
Prof. Choi said, "my latest research laid a foundation for discovering the cycle from rhodopsin to metarhodopsin II with a help of arrestin, which has been know as inactive thus far. This discovery of the structure of visual signals will help developing a cue for born & acquired diseases, such as Oguchi's disease and Stargardt disease.
This research was financially funded by National Research Foundation of Korea in Ministry of Education, Science and Technology.
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