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KEYWORDS Fundamental mechanism of "Life" Comparative and Functional Genomics of Photosynthetic Organisms (Plants, Algae and Cyanobacteria) Plastid Division, Visualization of Nucleoids Organellar DNA polymerases

News The genomic sequence of Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 strain GT-S (a laboratory strain) was published under an accession number AP012205. This includes many revisions of the genomic sequence itself and its annotation of the Kazusa strain, and will be the master sequence of this cyanobacterium.

We are working on functional genomics of photosynthesis and organelles. We use various materials such as cyanobacteria, Cyanidioschyzon merolae (red alga), Chlamydomonas reinhardtii (green alga), Physcomitrella patens (moss), Arabidopsis thaliana (thale cress), and Pisum sativum (pea). Some of them are displayed on the upper right panel. We use these organisms, because the genome of most of them has been elucidated in the past decade. We are performing comparative genomic analysis of photosynthetic and non-photosynthetic organisms, and based on these results, we identified many protein genes that are conserved in photosynthetic organisms. The function of these genes are being analyzed in various organisms. We developed a comparative genomic tool called Gclust. See "Software" for our original software. The current projects are described in "Research activities".
In addition to these experimental research, we are developing a theory on the fundamental mechanism of "Life". Under the notion of "Circulating and benefiting life", we develop a new theory of life based on the tight coupling of photosynthesis, metabolism, cellular processes, body plan, ecosystem, and evolution. A short book is available in Japanese on-line.

Last update: Mar. 21, 2017.