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ISHIGURO Ryo
Title

Assistant Professor
Department Department of Chemistry and Biomolecular Science
Course Biomolecular Science Course

Research fields

My research is the improvement of native gel electrophoresis under high hydrostatic pressure for the study on association/dissociation phenomena of biological molecules. In several diseases, some proteins are known to associate with each other in the cell. Protein interactions are relatively weak so that it is hard to characterize them quantitatively. Native gel electrophoresis is the method that utilizes the mobility difference of proteins in the gel media based on their size, and displays the wide range of size distribution of proteins in a given condition as bands. With high hydrostatic pressures and various temperatures, the association/dissociation equilibrium is controlled and the quantitative interpretation can be made base on the thermodynamic theory.

This method is very simple but can be applicable not only for proteins but also for nucleotides. It is essential for the students to understand the basis of thermodynamics and to educate them from its very beginning may be another aspect of this research.

Fig. 1 Originally developed high-pressure electrophoresis instrument Fig. 2 Application of high-pressure gel electrophoresis for amyloidogenesis

Research Keywords

native gel electrophoresis

high hydrostatic pressure

amyloid

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