Members

After experiencing several research fields, my current background is “synthetic biology”, which aims at understanding biological phenomena by “arbitrarily manipulating” them. My recent research interest has been developing tools to manipulate protein dynamics, such as diffusion, assembly and disassembly, inside living cells.

My research aim through Hakubi project is to elucidate the biological roles of dynamic assembly/disassembly of proteins involved in glycolysis. Glycolysis is a part of glucose metabolism pathway, which is the major source of biochemical energy. Relative activity of glycolysis is significantly altered in various diseases including cancer, underpinning the physiological importance of appropriate glycolysis regulations. Conventionally, glycolytic proteins were believed to be uniformly distributed throughout the cytosol. However, recent reports suggest that the proteins dynamically assemble and disassemble in response to environmental cues, such as hypoxic conditions or change in metabolite concentrations. This newly-found behavior may thus provide a novel mechanism of glycolytic regulation.

Currently, however, lack in methodologies to manipulate the assembly/disassembly, as well as in detailed and comprehensive description of the phenomenon, hinders our understanding of potential biological roles. I will therefore apply tools I developed to arbitrarily manipulate the assembly/disassembly of glycolytic proteins. Moreover, I will establish methods to image the protein dynamics inside living tissues, and to comprehensively identify the proteomes included in the protein assembly. This multi-disciplinary approach to dynamic protein assembly/disassembly will reveal the novel regulation mechanism of glucose metabolism pathway, potentially contributing to novel therapeutics for diseases including cancer.