Minseok Jeong

Minseok Jeong is a Ph.D. student interested in the interplay between RNA and proteins. Using biochemistry and cryo-EM, Minseok studies how RNA recruits or sculpts its protein partners, and how it can be chemically modified without breaking these finely tuned relationships. A background in pharmacy carries such molecular rules toward the rational design of RNA therapeutics.

Minseok is a co-first author of a 2026 Nature study that resolved a long-standing question in RNA silencing: how a bulky small RNA duplex is loaded onto Argonaute (AGO). By capturing AGO with the HSP90 chaperone machinery and determining its structures by cryo-EM, Minseok and colleagues found that chaperones hold AGO in an open, largely unfolded state, and that RNA loading itself drives AGO folding. The work also showed which RNA features AGO requires, opening a way to design therapeutic siRNAs with less trial and error.

Minseok has also contributed to the lab’s work on how TRIM25 surveils foreign RNA (Science, 2025), on the genome packaging signal of SARS-CoV-2 (Nature Communications, 2026) and on viral RNA elements that stabilize RNA and enhance translation (Cell, 2026).

Research interests

RNA silencing · RNA–protein interactions · Structural biology · RNA therapeutics

Education

• 2023–present M.S./Ph.D. Student, School of Biological Sciences, Seoul National University
• 2019–2023 Pharm.D. in Pharmacy, Seoul National University
• 2017–2019 Biomaterials Engineering (Pre-Pharmacy Studies), Seoul National University

Publications with our lab

• Functional atlas of vertebrate viral RNA elements that stabilize RNA and enhance translation
  J. J. Seo¹, C. Lee¹, D. Lim, M. Jeong, S.-J. Jung, and V. N. Kim^{✉︎ (corresponding author)}
  Cell (2026), 189(22):7105-7120.e12
• Identification of the SARS-CoV-2 genome packaging signal in the nsp12-coding region
  Y. Park^{✉︎ (corresponding author)}, J. Lim, H. Cho, A. Son, M. Jeong, Y.-s. Lee^{✉︎ (corresponding author)}, and V. N. Kim^{✉︎ (corresponding author)}
  Nature Communications (2026), 17(1):8500
• Structural basis for chaperone-guided assembly of RNA-induced silencing complex
  Y.-Y. Lee¹, M. Jeong¹, H. Lee¹, D. Lee, J. Lee, J. Park, V. N. Kim^{✉︎ (corresponding author)}, and S.-H. Roh^{✉︎ (corresponding author)}
  Nature (2026), 655(8125):1339-1348
• Exogenous RNA surveillance by proton-sensing TRIM25
  M. Kim, Y. Pyo, S.-I. Hyun, M. Jeong, Y. Choi, and V. N. Kim^{✉︎ (corresponding author)}
  Science (2025), 388(6742):eads4539