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YOKOGAWA Takashi
Title

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

Research fields

Protein synthesis system is the system for protein biosynthesis in cells. In the system, there are a series of complicated reactions in which about 50 RNA molecules and about 50 protein molecules are working in a coordinated manner. However, each reaction can be explained as a genuine chemical reaction. Many reactions of protein synthesis system have common characteristics among Bacteria, Archaea and Eucarya, three domains of life, but there are also many different characteristics depending on a domain. My aims of studies are to investigate the differences of the protein synthesis system in detail among domains of life and to construct the artificial hybrid protein synthesis system by combining the good characteristics of each system. The hybrid system make it possible to add a novel function to protein by synthesizing the protein into which a non-canonical amino acid (i.e. not specified in the genetic code) is introduced, or to RNA molecule by adding artificial modificationｓ.

Fig. 1 The overall structure of the yeast tyrosyl-tRNA synthetase complexed with its cognate tyrosine tRNA

Research Overview

Research Keywords

Protein synthesis system

Genetic engineering

RNA technology

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