Biotech meets AI at Daesung's microbes forum

Bioengineers will be able to design and build genomes on a large scale by 2030, says Bernhard Palsson, a renowned bioengineering professor at the University of California, San Diego.

Bernhard Palsson, fourth from left, professor of bioengineering at the University of California, San Diego, poses for a photo with other plenary presenters and Cho Byung-kwan, third from left, the endowed chair professor of life sciences at KAIST, during the 2023 Daesung Haegang Microbes Forum held in central Seoul on Tuesday. [DAESUNG GROUP]

Bioengineers will be able to design and build genomes on a large scale by 2030, says Bernhard Palsson, a renowned bioengineering professor at the University of California, San Diego.

“By the end of this decade, we are probably going to have all departments of genome engineering, because we will be starting to design and build them on a large scale,” said Palsson, in his speech during the 2023 Daesung Haegang Microbes Forum, on Tuesday.

This year’s Daesung Haegang Microbes Forum, in its sixth year, was held at the Westin Josun Hotel in central Seoul under the theme of “The Impact of AI on Biotech.”

Daesung Group held the 2023 Daesung Haegang Microbes Forum on Tuesday at the Westin Josun Hotel in central Seoul, under the theme of ″the Impact of AI on Biotech.″ [DAESUNG GROUP]

Hosted by Daesung Haegang Science and Culture Foundation and organized by Daesung Group, the 2023 edition of the annual Daesung Haegang Microbes Forum featured presentations by biologists and AI experts including Palsson, who is considered one of the leading figures in systems biology.

“Korea has a lot of talent already to meet the challenge" of integrating different types of data to be interoperable for analytics, said Palsson, in his plenary presentation titled "Emerging interoperable knowledge-enriched multi-data type analytics."

Palsson continued, “this, I predict, will help the [country's] bio foundry to quickly get to a worldwide leadership status at least as far as microorganisms are concerned.”

Amid the accelerating penetration of AI in the biotech field, there was a buzz in speakers’ presentations for fast-developing AI technology’s transformative impact on the biological research landscape.

“We are living in an era filled with excitement, which matches that of [the quantum physics] scientists in the early 1900s,” said Seok Cha-ok, professor of the Department of Chemistry at Seoul National University.

Bernhard Palsson, professor of bioengineering at the University of California, San Diego, poses for a photo before the 2023 Daesung Haegang Microbes Forum held in central Seoul on Tuesday. [DAESUNG GROUP]

“In the future, we will be able to predict what is happening inside an organism and simulate what happens inside a person’s body when they get disease or take medications on a molecular level,” said Seok.

Other speakers at the event included Professor Oh Hye-yeon, head of KAIST’s AI Research Center, and Professor Yoo Hoi-jun, head of the Graduate School of Artificial Intelligence and Semiconductors at KAIST.

“The rapid advancement of AI technologies has revolutionized various industries, and biotech is certainly no exception,” Daesung Group Chairman Younghoon David Kim said in his opening remarks read out by Suzanna Oh, Daesung Group senior adviser.

“Now is truly an exciting time for science, and with AI as our allies, possibilities are boundless.”

The Tuesday event was also attended by Hong Suk-joon, a People Power Party lawmaker, and Noh Do-young, president of the Institute for Basic Science.

BY SHIN HA-NEE [shin.hanee@joongang.co.kr]