Title: The use of Aquatic Vaccines and Therapeutics in Aquaculture Astract: Aquatic vaccines and therapeutics are fundamental to sustainable aquaculture, addressing the increasing incidence of infectious diseases associated with farming intensification, global animal movement, and environmental stressors. Conventional reliance on antibiotics has contributed to antimicrobial resistance, environmental pollution, and food safety risks, highlighting the need for preventive health-based strategies. This talk highlights an integrated disease management approach that combines biosecurity, comprehensive husbandry practices, probiotics, immunostimulants, bacteriophages, medicinal plants, and vaccination. Particular emphasis is placed on vaccines, especially feed-based oral vaccines, as effective, eco-friendly tools that stimulate both mucosal and systemic immune responses while reducing handling stress. Collectively, these approaches highlight the critical role of vaccines and alternative therapeutics in strengthening the resilience and long-term sustainability of aquaculture production systems. Personal Profile: Dr. Aslah Mohamad is a Lecturer at the China-ASEAN College of Marine Sciences, Xiamen University Malaysia. He specializes in vaccinology and aquaculture biotechnology, with a research focus on fish health management, aquatic animal vaccine development, and sustainable aquaculture systems. His work emphasizes understanding the mechanisms and efficacy of fish vaccines, including feed-based multivalent vaccines, as well as the development of aquatic animal therapeutics to mitigate antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in aquaculture. In addition, Dr. Aslah’s research explores the application of microalgae-derived products in aquafeeds as functional health management tools, contributing to environmentally responsible and resilient aquaculture practices.

Title: Enzyme Specificity Unlocked : The EZSCAN Advantage Astract: Identifying amino acid residues critical for determining substrate and cofactor specificity is essential for understanding enzyme mechanisms and guiding protein engineering. Current methods struggle to distinguish these residues from those merely maintaining structural stability. The research team developed a computational approach to identify residues influencing specificity among structurally homologous enzymes by framing sequence comparison as a classification problem—an innovation that enabled the objective identification of key functional differences. This method was validated using four pairs of enzymes and accurately predicted known specificity-determining residues. Experimental validation further demonstrated that introducing the predicted key substitutions could successfully alter substrate and cofactor specificity while preserving protein expression levels, highlighting the method’s robust effectiveness. The team has since implemented this approach as a practical web tool, EZSCAN (Enzyme Substrate-specificity and Conservation Analysis Navigator), designed for the rapid identification of functionally critical amino acid residues in enzymes. Personal Profile: Dr. Niide has been serving as an Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, University of Osaka, Japan, since 2020. He earned his Ph.D. in Applied Chemistry from Kyushu University. Before joining the University of Osaka, he received extensive training in high- throughput screening in Umetsu Laboratory at Tohoku University and in computational protein design in the Kuhlman Laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where both he deepened his understanding of enzyme structure–function relationships through advanced protein engineering. His current research focuses on integrating protein engineering with metabolic engineering to rationally design enzymes that enhance or alter cellular functions. In particular, his work has contributed to elucidating how amino acid conservation, structural dynamics, and machine learning–based models can be combined to predict and understand protein function.

Title: Programming Gut Microbial Metabolism through Synthetic Biology for Intestinal Health Astract: The human gut microbiota constitutes a complex ecosystem critical for host homeostasis, and its disruption is associated with various intestinal diseases. A key area of Dr. Lee’s research is microbial bile acid metabolism: primary bile acids assist in fat digestion, while gut microbes transform a portion into secondary bile acids that can drive intestinal inflammation, epithelial damage, and colorectal tumorigenesis. This presentation will highlight how synthetic biology strategies can be used to reprogram gut microbial metabolism, attenuate tumor-promoting signals, and restore intestinal balance. By uncovering mechanistic principles of microbiome–host interactions and engineering targeted microbial therapeutics, his work provides new approaches for preventing and treating intestine-related disorders driven by dysregulated bile acid metabolism. Personal Profile: Dr. Jae Won Lee is an Assistant Professor of Biotechnology at Sungshin Women’s University, South Korea. His research centers on synthetic biology for sustainability and human health. During his doctoral studies, he engineered model organisms including Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Escherichia coli for the biosynthesis of high-value biochemicals, such as 2,3-butanediol, fucose, and fucosylated human milk oligosaccharides with prebiotic functions. Since joining Sungshin Women’s University, his work has shifted to developing engineered microorganisms as living therapeutics, with a focus on understanding microbiome–host interactions and reprogramming gut microbial metabolism to maintain intestinal homeostasis.

Title: From Empirical Tuning to Platform Design: CRISPR Screening–Enabled Mammalian Cell Engineering Astract: The expanding diversity of complex biotherapeutics (e.g., bispecific antibodies, hard-to-express proteins) exposes inherent limitations of empirically optimized mammalian cell factories. While CHO cell-based monoclonal antibody production is mature, next-generation biologic manufacturing is hindered by poorly characterized modality-specific bottlenecks. Leveraging advances in mammalian synthetic biology and genome editing, genome-wide CRISPR screening has become an unbiased tool for systematic cell engineering. This presentation introduces a virus-free, RMCE-based CRISPR screening platform for scalable knockout/activation screens in CHO cells; integrating productivity-, stress- and FACS-based selection, the platform identifies novel genetic and epigenetic targets regulating cell fitness, stress tolerance and transgene expression. Combining CRISPR-driven target discovery with precise knock-in gene expression control provides a rational framework for platform-level mammalian cell factory design, shifting cell engineering from empirical tuning to predictive, modality-adaptive platforms for next-generation biotherapeutics manufacturing. Personal Profile: Dr. Jae Seong Lee is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Engineering Biology, KAIST, Korea. He earned his B.S. and Ph.D. from KAIST and completed postdoctoral research at the Technical University of Denmark, where he served as a founding member of the CHO Cell Line Engineering and Design section at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability. There, he developed key CRISPR/Cas9-based genome engineering technologies for CHO cell factories, now widely used in mammalian bioprocessing for therapeutic protein production. After returning to Korea in 2017, he joined Ajou University as an Assistant Professor before moving to KAIST. His current research focuses on developing a mammalian synthetic biology toolkit, integrating genome-wide screening, tunable gene expression systems, and AI-driven approaches for advanced cell line engineering and biomanufacturing.

Title: Development of nucleic acid-based gene regulators for metabolic engineering and molecular diagnosis Astract: Synthetic biology aims at providing solutions for the challenges of modern society and paving new ways to understand life. Realizing the true potential of synthetic biology is dependent on the ability to regulate gene expression. Nucleic acids offer new opportunities for developing artificial gene regulators based on their programmability, versatility, low genetic footprint, and economic production both in vivo or in vitro. In this talk, the speaker will introduce examples of artificial gene regulators developed through rational design and artificial evolution. Specifically, an efficient development process for RNA-based inducible gene regulators and their application to sensing of small molecules will be presented. Additionally, a rationally-designed nucleic acid-based molecular program for rapid diagnosis of pathogens called SENSR will be discussed. Personal Profile: Dr. Sungho Jang currently serves as an Associate Professor in the Division of Bioengineering at Incheon National University, South Korea. His research is centered on redesigning biological systems by integrating principles from synthetic biology and artificial evolution. A core focus of his approach is the development and application of nucleic acid-based tools, particularly synthetic RNA devices like riboswitches, to serve as artificial gene regulators and metabolite sensors. This expertise is applied to develop advanced platforms for the production of valuable chemicals and pharmaceuticals, the manipulation of the microbiome for therapeutic purposes, and the creation of novel tools for the molecular diagnosis of diseases.

Title: Development of Engineered Living Biotherapeutic Products (eLBPs) through Systems and Synthetic Biology for Enhanced Metabolic Activities in the Gut Astract: The convergence of systems biology and synthetic biology provides a powerful framework for the development of engineered living biotherapeutic products (eLBPs) with improved functionality and metabolic performance in the gut. This study presents a systems-level strategy for designing synthetic microbial therapeutics capable of sustaining high metabolic activities under intestinal conditions. Using Saccharomyces boulardii and Escherichia coli Nissle 1917 as chassis organisms, the researchers integrated multi-omics data with genome-scale metabolic modeling to identify and overcome key bottlenecks limiting microbial metabolism and recombinant protein secretion in the gut. Specifically, S. boulardii strains engineered to metabolize host-derived sugars such as L-fucose and lactose demonstrated enhanced metabolic activity through continuous carbon supply, while E. coli Nissle exhibited improved energy efficiency by eliminating trehalose metabolism–related constraints under anaerobic conditions. These findings establish a rational design framework for constructing eLBPs with enhanced intestinal metabolic activity, bridging computational modeling with synthetic biology to achieve robust and predictable function within complex gut ecosystems. Personal Profile: Dr. Jungyeon Kim is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Bioindustrial Sciences at Seoul National University (Graduate School of International Agricultural Technology, Republic of Korea). His research focuses on understanding and engineering microbial systems through integrative systems biology and synthetic biology approaches. His group applies multi-omics analysis, genome-scale metabolic modeling, and CRISPR-based genome engineering to design microbial platforms with enhanced metabolic and functional traits. In particular, his work aims to elucidate regulatory networks governing microbial metabolism and translate this knowledge into the rational design of next-generation probiotics and microbial cell factories.

Title: Exploring the Potential of Biocatalysis for Abiotic Chemical Transformations Astract: With the rapid advancement of biotechnology, biocatalysis has emerged as a promising and sustainable approach for the synthesis of valuable chemicals. A major challenge associated with biocatalysis is to expand the catalytic repertoire of enzymes to meet the requirements of synthetic chemistry. In this context, the researcher’s group is working toward the discovery of novel enzymes capable of catalyzing abiotic chemical transformation by leveraging principles of organic chemistry. In this presentation, they will introduce their recent progress in identifying novel bacterial enzymes capable of catalyzing the NHC-mediated radical acylation and other abiotic chemical transformations. Personal Profile: Dr. Shunsuke Kato received his Ph.D. in Applied Chemistry from Osaka University, Graduate School of Engineering, in 2021 under the supervision of Prof. Takashi Hayashi. During his doctoral studies, he joined the group of Prof. Kazushi Mashima (Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University) in 2016. From 2017 to 2018, he conducted research as a visiting scholar in the group of Prof. Ulrich Schwaneberg at the Institute of Biotechnology, RWTH Aachen University. In 2019, he undertook an internship at Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd. (Bioscience Research Laboratory). In 2021, he was promoted to Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Chemistry, Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University. In 2025, he was appointed Associate Professor at Engineering Biology Research Center, Kobe University. His current research interests lie in the area of biocatalysis, including the genome mining of novel enzymes, and their application to the metabolic engineering.

Title: Metabolic engineering of Escherichia coli for de novo production of lauryl glucoside Astract: Lauryl glucoside is a biodegradable, non-ionic surfactant commonly used in cosmetics, yet its conventional chemical synthesis raises sustainability concerns. To address this, the researchers engineered Escherichia coli BL21(DE3) with a novel pathway for microbial lauryl glucoside production. They first optimised the biosynthesis of the precursor 1-dodecanol, then screened a panel of UDP-glycosyltransferases for their ability to convert it into lauryl glucoside. Among six candidates, MtH2 from Medicago truncatula demonstrated the highest activity, and its product formation was confirmed by HPLC and targeted LC-MS. Pathway analysis revealed that limited 1-dodecanol supply was the key bottleneck, and supplementation experiments substantially improved lauryl glucoside yields. Overall, this work establishes a proof of concept for sustainable microbial production of lauryl glucoside and provides new insight into pathway bottlenecks for future optimisation. Personal Profile: Dr. Pachara Sattayawat is an Assistant Professor in Microbiology at the Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Chiang Mai University. She received her PhD in microbial metabolic engineering and synthetic biology from Imperial College London, UK. Her research focuses on engineering bacteria for enhanced characteristics, particularly for the bioproduction of high-value chemicals and recombinant proteins. Her work spans system and pathway design, protein discovery, enzyme characterisation, and implementation in microbial hosts using synthetic biology approaches. More recently, her interests have expanded to engineering Escherichia coli for therapeutic antibody production in cancer research, as well as developing engineered symbionts for chemical detoxification.

Title: Tackling the global spread of AMR using genome-resolved metagenomics and AI Astract: We live in a microbial world (≈1 million species), but humanity’s adversarial microbial relationship comes from a few pathogens and widespread antimicrobials. Microbe eradication often fails—disinfected areas recolonize fast, and antibiotics fuel resistant pathogens. Global antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in common pathogens (e.g., ESKAPE) threatens healthcare; as effective antibiotics shrink, some pathogens may become untreatable, endangering millions of hospital patients. AMR already causes >1 million annual deaths, with the UN projecting it will surpass all cancers (>10 million/year) by 2050. New methods are needed to track AMR transmission and use ecology to reduce AMR reservoirs. Long-read sequencing-aided genome-resolved metagenomics can transform microbial surveillance, as seen in hospital and gut pathogen tracking. To understand microbial community assembly and pathogen resistance, new AI/modelling tools (using high-throughput metagenomic data) provide mechanistic insights. Combined with data mining, these help study microbiome recovery from antibiotics and develop new biotherapeutics to stop AMR pathogen spread. Personal Profile: Prof. Niranjan Nagarajan is currently an Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore’s School of Medicine and Department of Computer Science, and Associate Director & Senior Group Leader at ASTAR’s Genome Institute of Singapore. He holds a 2000 B.A. in Computer Science and Mathematics (Ohio Wesleyan University), a master’s in Computer Science (Cornell University), and a 2006 Ph.D. in Computer Science (Cornell University, Advisor: Prof. Uri Keich). After postdoctoral research on genome assembly and metagenomics at the University of Maryland (Advisor: Prof. Mihai Pop), he joined ASTAR as a Principal Investigator in 2009. His lab focuses on advanced genome analytic tools for microbial community function and human health impact, pioneering genome-resolved metagenomics assembly tools, studying microbiomes in antimicrobial resistance (AMR) transmission and Asian skin conditions via systems biology. He has over 100 papers (>20,000 citations, H-index 64), is a 2021-2023 Highly Cited Researcher, and won the 2024 National Research Foundation Investigatorship (Singapore).

Title: Synthetic ecology of microbiomes and beyond: Navigating microbial community-function landscape based on beyond-pairwise interactions Astract: Microbes often exist as diverse, interacting communities known as microbiomes, which can exhibit unique and robust functionalities not observed in individual microbial species. Although harnessing microbiome functions is desirable in various fields such as agriculture, bioproduction, and human healthcare, progress is hindered by our limited understanding of which compositional patterns lead to specific functional outcomes. To address this challenge, Dr. Ishizawa and colleagues are developing a simple modeling framework to explain microbial community-level functions based on the information of microbial interspecies interactions. In this talk, he will discuss how to navigate the immense complexity of microbial interactions and design functional microbiomes for biotechnological applications. Personal Profile: Dr. Hidehiro Ishizawa currently works as an assistant professor at the School of Engineering, University of Hyogo, Japan. He received his PhD degree in Engineering from Osaka University in 2020. After obtaining his doctorate, Dr. Ishizawa served as a JSPS postdoctoral fellow at Shizuoka University before joining his current position. His research focus on establishing a practical framework to predict, explain, and understand microbial community assembly and functions. He utilizes several model systems including plant-microbiome symbiosis and microbial communities working on bioremediation.

Title: Modulating Bacterial Function with Machine Learning-Derived Modules Astract: Synthetic biology offers significant potential for the tailored reprogramming of cellular functions for a wide range of applications. However, strain engineering efforts often face challenges due to context-dependent gene regulation and the complex interactions between synthetic circuits and host physiology. In this study, we introduce a novel framework that utilizes iModulons—co-regulated gene sets identified through machine learning—as modular design elements. This strategy allows for the precise identification of essential genetic components, improving target selection and the predictability of circuit behavior across different contexts. Comparative analyses with traditional methods demonstrate that our approach significantly enhances efficiency and predictability. These results highlight the transformative potential of iModulon-based strategies for the systematic and reliable reprogramming of complex bacterial regulatory networks. Personal Profile: Jongoh Shin is a professor at Chonnam National University, Korea. He received his Ph.D. from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in August 2020. Afterward, he conducted postdoctoral research at UC San Diego, USA. In 2025, Dr. Shin returned to Korea to continue his academic career at Chonnam National University. His research focuses on analyzing microbes through systems biology and engineering them with synthetic biology approaches to push the boundaries of synthetic biological systems.

Title: SynBio Challenges: A platform to foster the future generations of synthetic biologists Astract: Synthetic biology is an emerging field at the crossroads of biology, informatics and engineering with broad impacts and implications on society. As its frontiers are pushing rapidly into the future, and the resulting knowledge is exploding, training future generations of synthetic biologists becomes increasingly challenging. SynBio Challenges takes on this problem by providing a platform where university students, both undergrad and postgraduate, compete on various tracks, each designed to align with a frontier of synthetic biology. Rules of the competition are set up to encourage students to explore and create. With experience of previous three years in mainland China, now SynBio Challenges is ready for the world. Personal Profile: Xiao earned his PhD degree from University of Minnesota Twin Cities in the laboratory of Dr. Antony Dean, received training in theories of population genetics and ecology, and invented tools in synthetic biology. Now he is working on Synthetic Evolution that is to leverage technologies of synthetic biology to evolve genes or cells under extreme conditions in laboratory to discover phenotypes unseen in nature. Examples include phage mutants that are evolved to infect new host strains of pathogenic bacteria as a potential measure to fight superbugs.

Title: Construction and Evolution of an Escherichia coli Strain Relying on Non-oxidative Glycolysis for Sugar Catabolism Astract: The Embden-Meyerhoff-Parnas (EMP) pathway, commonly known as glycolysis, represents the fundamental biochemical infrastructure for sugar catabolism in almost all organisms, as it provides key components for biosynthesis, energy metabolism, and global regulation. EMP-based metabolism synthesizes three-carbon (C3) metabolites prior to two-carbon (C2) metabolites, and must emit one CO2 in the synthesis of the C2 building block, acetyl-CoA, a precursor for many industrially important products. Thus, a key limitation for producing acetyl-CoA derived bioproducts is the intrinsic carbon loss in acetyl-CoA biosynthesis. Pyruvate decarboxylation releases the carboxyl group of pyruvate as carbon dioxide or formate to the environment. To overcome this limitation, they constructed and evolved an E. coli strain that relies on non-oxidative glycolysis (NOG) for carbon catabolism to support growth. In this talk, Dr. Paul Lin will discuss how the fundamental metabolic pathways can be re-wired and how regulatory circuits can be altered through rational design, genome editing and evolution. Personal Profile: Dr. Paul Lin is an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Molecular Medicine and Bioengineering at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU) in Taiwan. Before joining NYCU, he was a Project Scientist at the Institute of Biological Chemistry, Academia Sinica, where he developed the second-ever synthetic CO2-fixing system distinct from those found in nature.As a postdoctoral fellow at UCLA, he created an Escherichia coli strain by replacing its native glycolytic pathway with a previously designed non-oxidative glycolysis (NOG) pathway, which bypasses the formation of C3 intermediates and directly generates stoichiometric amounts of C2 metabolites. During his graduate studies at UCLA, he accomplished the first demonstration of high isobutanol production directly from cellulose using Clostridium thermocellum.

Title: Toward Sustainable Carbon Capture and Utilization via Synthetic Biology Astract: Their mission is to solve the carbon dioxide problem by using technologies and concepts of synthetic biology which follows the steps of design, build, test and learn. Till now, ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase, (RuBisCO) is the most effective enzyme for carbon dioxide uptake. Therefore, they developed the RuBisCO-equipped Escherichia coli to boost carbon dioxide assimilation and coupled with different enzymes for high-end chemicals. On the other hand, they have explored many genes, from pyridoxal kinase (pdxY), carbonic anhydrase (CA), and chaperone protein (GroELS), which were integrated into Chlamydomonas reinhardtii or applied using CRISPRa/i technology in Chlorella sorokiniana, thus enhancing carbon capture and utilization in microalgae. Personal Profile: Professor I-Son (Grace) Ng currently serves in the Department of Chemical Engineering at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) since 2014 and is a leading scholar in synthetic biology. Prior to joining NCKU, she served at Xiamen University from 2010 to 2014. Under her guidance, NCKU student teams have earned 7 gold medals and the 2019 World Championship at iGEM. She received the University Innovation and Social Responsibility Teaching Excellence Award for four consecutive years (2020 – 2023), the Research Excellence Award in NCKU (2021), the Outstanding Female Chemical Engineer Award from Taiwan Institute of Chemical Engineers (2022), and from the Biotechnology and Biochemical Engineering Society of Taiwan (2023), Outstanding Research Award in National Science and Technology Council (NSTC, 2024). Since 2020, she has been ranked among the top 2% of scientists worldwide.

Title: Phospholipid assembly based artificial cells and their collective behaviors Astract: Cell-free synthesis technology was initially developed as an alternative platform for protein production, overcoming the limitations of cellular expression systems. By bypassing constraints such as cell viability, toxicity, and membrane permeability, cell-free protein synthesis has enabled the efficient production of a wide range of proteins, including those that are difficult to express in living cells. Over time, the scope of cell-free systems has expanded beyond protein synthesis, evolving into a powerful tool for cell-free metabolic engineering, where complex biosynthetic pathways can be constructed and optimized in a controlled, cell-free environment. More recently, cell-free systems have been integrated into synthetic cell engineering, where biochemical reactions are encapsulated within artificial compartments to mimic cellular functions and create programmable synthetic cells.In this presentation, he will provide a chronological review of the development of cell-free synthetic biology, tracing its progression from a protein synthesis platform to a versatile system for metabolic pathway engineering and, ultimately, the construction of artificial cells. By highlighting key advancements and applications, this talk will explore how cell-free systems are shaping the future of biomanufacturing, biosensing, and synthetic cell design. Personal Profile: Dong-Myung Kim is a professor at Chungnam National University, Korea, specializing in cell-free synthetic biology. He earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. degrees from Seoul National University, completing his doctorate in 1996. Following his Ph.D., he conducted postdoctoral research at Genentech and Stanford University in the United States before joining Roche Diagnostics, where he served as a principal scientist and later as a research director. In 2003, Dr. Kim returned to Korea to continue his academic career at Chungnam National University, where his research has been dedicated to advancing cell-free synthetic biology. His work focuses on developing biomanufacturing platforms and biosensor systems, leveraging cell-free technologies to expand the frontiers of biotechnology.Dr. Kim is currently serving as the president of the Korean Society for Biotechnology and Bioengineering (KSBB), contributing to the advancement of the field both nationally and internationally.