Jaewoo, an undergraduate student who has been working hard in the lab since the K-Lab opened, won the best poster award from Brain-Mind-Behavior Program. Professors added that he won the first place by a wide margin. Congratulations!!

Prof. Liqun Luo, a leading neuroscientist at Stanford, visited the Kim lab and had a fun time chatting with the students over a cup of tea. He also kindly signed his autograph on his new neuroscience textbook. Hope to see him more often as we grow into a “good” neuroscience lab!

Han-Eol, Dong-Jun and Minjin, who have been working in the lab since the lab started, formally joined the K-Lab as PhD students. They are now in either School of Biological Sciences or Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience. These outstanding students have been doing super well, but now it is a whole another beginning. Cannot wait to see them blossoming as excellent neuroscientists!

Celebrating the hottest time of the year, we held a water gun battle against the Jinny Kim lab at KIST. It was a one-sided game, but we yielded the victory to the KIST team, enjoyed the feast and safely returned to our base.

Our first paper (a review paper on tissue clearing and labeling techniques) is now online in Molecules and Cells website. A small contribution to the tissue clearing field and to the Korean Society for Molecular and Cellular Biology. Hope you find this review useful and cite when discussing tissue clearing/labeling! And great job, Jinyoung and Minjin!

Fig. 1. Tissue clearing techniques. (A) Light scattering in biological tissues can be reduced by removal of lipid and RI matching. (B) Simple immersion in a high-RI aqueous solution renders the tissue modestly transparent by homogenizing scattering throughout the sample. (C) Delipidation and dehydration / hyperhydration followed by refractive index matching. (Top) For solvent-based clearing, the tissue is incubated in dehydrating solvent for delipidation and dehydration, and is moved to a high-RI clearing solvent where RI matching and additional delipidation occur. (Bottom) The sample is placed in an aqueous solution that contains high concentration of non-ionic detergent and denaturant, where delipidation, hyperhydration, and RI matching take place. (D) A biological sample is first transformed into a tissue-gel hybrid by hydrogel embedding (Top) or glutaraldehyde fixation (Bottom), where the gel network increases the tissue integrity. The tissue-gel hybrid then can withstand extensive delipidation by incubation in ionic detergent (SDS) assisted by electrophoresis or heating.

K-Lab was selected for “KIST Joint Research Lab” grant program! We had a signboard hanging ceremony. See the news article for the details about the grant (in Korean): http://news1.kr/articles/?2622594

We just moved into a the Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics (Seoul National University Bldg 105). Excited to begin our research in the newly remodeled space optimized for the neural circuit research!

Dongyoon graduated from the School of Biological Sciences at Seoul National University and entered the Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience to pursue combined M.S./Ph.D. degrees in the Kim lab (starting Mar 1, 2016). May he and his research bloom like the spring flowers!

The Kim lab is now affiliated with the Department of Chemistry and the School (= Department) of Biological Sciences. Especially Sung-Yon will participate in teaching in the School of Biological Sciences. Students may apply to the M.S./Ph.D. program of the School of Biological Sciences to pursue graduate research in the Kim lab.