Institute for Basic Science (IBS)
기초과학연구원

South Korea

IBS was established in 2011 aiming at advancing the frontiers of knowledge and fostering leading scientists of tomorrow by pursuing excellence in basic science research. Since then, IBS has been providing infrastructure for long-term, large-scale, and group research as well as supporting autonomous research activities of researchers, focusing on exploration of creative knowledge.

As a basic science research institute representing Korea, IBS is running 28 Centers in physics, chemistry, mathematics, life sciences, and interdisciplinary areas as of late 2017 and planning to increase the number to 50. The institute’s main philosophy is to select a world renowned scientist as a Center’s director and create an environment where the director can concentrate on his/her own creative research. That is because IBS believes that creativity can be maximized when excellent researchers focus on conducting challenging research in an autonomous research environment.

IBS has been generating research outcomes that attract world-wide attention and was named one of Nature Index Rising Stars 2016. Despite a short history, the institute is standing shoulder to shoulder with international basic science research institutes. With the 2018 completion of its new headquarters designed as an urban science park, IBS will maximize merits of group and interdisciplinary research as well as bring IBS’ research capabilities together. It will more actively recruit young researchers at home and abroad with its expansion, heralding an even brighter future.

Since 2016, IBS has been operating Young Scientist Fellowship (YSF) under the slogan ‘Initiate your own research at IBS.’ YSF provides junior researchers with research autonomy and independence so that they can devote themselves to their work. Those selected can have access to IBS’ cutting-edge research infrastructure and equipment as well as can enjoy opportunities to grow through interdisciplinary research with outstanding IBS researchers.

1 July 2017 - 30 June 2018

Region: Global
Subject/journal group: All

The table to the right includes counts of all research outputs for Institute for Basic Science (IBS) published between 1 July 2017 - 30 June 2018 which are tracked by the Nature Index.

Hover over the donut graph to view the FC output for each subject. Below, the same research outputs are grouped by subject. Click on the subject to drill-down into a list of articles organized by journal, and then by title.

Note: Articles may be assigned to more than one subject area.

AC	FC
299	79.08

Outputs by subject (FC)

Subject	AC	FC
Physical Sciences	184	47.67
Chemistry	137	36.33
Life Sciences	50	11.37
Earth & Environmental Sciences	4	1.02

Highlight of the month

Fending off immune attacks to CRISPR

© VICTOR HABBICK VISIONS/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty

A chemical tweak to one component of the CRISPR gene-editing platform could help neutralize the threat posed by immune reactions to the popular DNA-engineering technique.

A team from South Korea, led by researchers from the Institute for Basic Science, showed that human and mouse cells recognized lab-synthesized ‘guide RNA’ — short sequences that lead DNA-cutting enzymes to specific places in the genome — as foreign and mount innate immune responses against them, leading to cell death.

This problem could be simply mitigated, however, by adding an enzyme that removes a trio of chemical tags — a relic of lab-made RNA synthesis — from the front end of the guide molecule. The team found that pre-treating guide RNAs in this way led to more efficient gene editing in human T cells, highlighting the potential of a simple way to make CRISPR safer for therapeutic applications.

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