In the era of post-genomic and bio-revolution,
17 questions that penetrate the core of life science!

It must be a stroke of luck to come across this book!
Kim Bit-naeri (Director, Institute for Basic Science, Professor Emeritus, Department of Life Sciences, Seoul National University)
The best companion for studying life in our time
- Jeoncheol (Dean of Hanshin University Graduate School of Theology)

Life sciences have been developing at a very rapid pace over the past decade.
The CRISPR-Cas9 gene scissors technology that enabled gene editing developed a treatment for sickle cell anemia, a genetic disease that has long plagued humanity, and research on immunotherapies using mRNA led to the development of a vaccine for COVID-19, which has caused panic around the world.
Modern life science encompasses fundamental sciences like physics and chemistry, as well as information technology and artificial intelligence. It is making remarkable progress as a convergent discipline that is shaking up our society and civilization in all directions, from academia to industry, politics, and economics.
As our knowledge and capabilities grow, the scientific mystery surrounding life deepens, and its ethical, philosophical, religious, and legal implications become more profound.
This time, 『Song Ki-won's Study of Life: Introduction to Life Sciences with 17 Questions』, published by Science Books Co., Ltd., is a textbook and guidebook that starts from the most fundamental questions of life sciences and gradually examines the topics of thought.
Professor Song Ki-won of the Department of Biochemistry at the College of Life Systems at Yonsei University, who has been intensely contemplating life science and its social implications in Korea, fully embodies the meaning of life science that he has been exploring throughout his life.

In his previous work, 『Song Ki-won's Post-Genome Era』 (Science Books, 2018), Professor Song Ki-won argued that human civilization has already moved beyond the genomic era of reading life information and into the post-genomic era of editing and recreating life forms.
This book takes a step back from the forefront of modern biology and reflects on the fundamentals of one's own study.
From very basic questions that anyone who has studied life sciences would have thought of at least once, such as “What is life?” or “How did life begin?”, to ethical and philosophical questions such as “How does life define me and others?” or “What ethical questions does life science raise?”, this book introduces various aspects of life sciences by raising 17 of the oldest yet always new questions.
This book, which compiles the core of the popular liberal arts course "What is Life Science?" that has been taught to students in the humanities and social sciences at Yonsei University for over 20 years, will provide a comprehensive overview of modern life science, which is evolving to the next stage through the spread of CRISPR-Cas9 gene scissors technology and the coronavirus pandemic.