Dr. Kim Sunghoon is a South Korean biologist.
Sunghoon Kim has been studying novel functions of human aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases (ARSs) and searching for their pathophysiological connections to human diseases (PNAS 105:11043, 2008; Nat Rev Cancer 11:708, 2011). He has identified potent novel tumor suppressors such as AIMP2/p38 (Nat Genet 34:330, 2003), AIMP3/p18 (Cell, 120:209, 2005). Besides, he has also investigated novel extracellular activities of ARSs and associated factors such as lysyl-tRNA synthetase (KRS) (PNAS 102, 6356, 2005), tryptophanyl-tRNA synthetase(WRS)(Nat Struct Mol Biol 11:149, 2004) and AIMP1/p43 (PNAS 103:14913, 2006). He also discovered the oncogenic variant of AIMP2, designated AIMP2-DX2, as one of the critical factors that determines the survival of lung cancer patients (Plos Genet 7:e1001351, 2011). More recently, he found that leucyl-tRNA synthetase (LRS) serves as an amino acid sensor for mTOR signal pathway (Cell 149:410, 2012).