Chanyoung Lee ’11 spent a good part of the past two summers surrounded by culture tubes and micropipets in a half-million-dollar confocal laser scanning microscope laboratory at Seoul National University.  He participated in an independent study molecular biology research project under the guidance of Professor Ryoo Hyun-Mo, a college friend of his father.   On September 17, 2010, he presented the findings of his study to his Woodberry classmates, along with his project advisor, Jim Reid, science department chair.

In his experiment, "Phosphorylation-dependent Interaction between Runx2 and Pin1 in Vivo,"

he studied the interactions of certain proteins within the DNA of cultured human kidney cells.  Mutations in these proteins lead to a severe skeletal birth defect called CCD, so Chan’s research may ultimately play a role in providing a better understanding of how to prevent and treat various skeletal disorders.  He began the project two summers ago by reading books and shadowing university lab staff to learn specific molecular biology techniques.  This past summer, he returned to the lab to conduct the experiment and to present his results to scientists in Seoul.

“This was an elegant and well-controlled investigation,” Jim Reid said.