Laboratory of Signal Transduction
Professor: Yoshikazu Ohya, PhD (E-mail: ohya@k.u-tokyo.ac.jp) Associate Professor: Kuninori Suzuki, PhD
1. Research subject:
The budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a very attractive model organism for studying the fundamental theories and concepts of eukaryotic cells. We applied the power of yeast genetics to understand many aspects of yeast cells. Our current research is mainly focused on (1) function of cell wall and cell wall integrity checkpoint and (2) system biology based on cell imaging.
(1) The cell wall is an essential cellular component in yeast. The cell wall is dynamic, because it undergoes remodeling during the cell cycle. We demonstrated that small rho type GTPase Rho1 is regulated by the progression of the cell cycle. We also found that there is a new cell cycle checkpoint mechanism called “cell wall integrity checkpoint” which functions to control cell cycle progression in response to cell wall perturbation. We are now studying such signaling mechanism as well as biosynthesis of the cell wall in yeast.
(2) To understand biological system as the network of logical and
informational process, one of the invaluable tools is genetics. Global analysis of the mutant phenotypes can provide relationships between knockout of the gene and function in the network. We developed CalMorph image analysis system useful to examine high-dimensional quantitative phenotypes under the fluorescent microscope. This method can be applied to identifying intracellular drug target, monitoring fermentation process during culture and studying biological diversity. Our ultimate goal is to place all yeast genes and their corresponding products on a functional signaling network based on phenotyping.
Our laboratory is located in the first floor of the Bioscience Building in Kashiwa Campus of University of Tokyo. We are always interested in receiving
applications from both experimentalists and computational scientists interested in yeast molecular and cellular biology and functional genomics.
HP: http：//ps.k.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ (only Japanese)
2. Selected publications:
Iwaki A, Ohnuki S, Suga Y, Izawa S and Ohya Y. (2013) Vanillin Inhibits Translation and Induces Messenger Ribonucleoprotein (mRNP) Granule Formation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae: Application and Validation of High-Content, Image-Based Profiling. PLoS ONE 8(4): e61748.
Yvert G, Ohnuki S, Nogami S, Imanaga Y, Fehrmann S, Schacherer J and Ohya Y.
(2013) Single-cell phenomics reveals intra-species variation of phenotypic noise in yeast. BMC systems biology 7: 54.
Ohnuki S, Enomoto K, Yoshimoto H, Ohya Y (2013), Dynamic changes in brewing yeast cells in culture revealed by statistical analyses of yeast morphological data, Journal of Bioscience and Bioengineering, 2013 Sep 5 doi:
10.1016/j.jbiosc.2013.08.005. [Epub ahead of print]
Okada H, Abe M, Asakawa-Minemura M, Hirata A, Qadota H, Morishita K, Ohnuki S, Nogami S, Ohya Y (2010) Multiple Functional Domains of the Yeast 1,3-β -Glucan Synthase Subunit Fks1p Revealed by Quantitative Phenotypic Analysis of Temperature-Sensitive Mutants. Genetics 184(4):1013-24.
Kono K, Nogami S, Abe M, Nishizawa M, Morishita S, Pellman D, Ohya Y.(2008) G1/S Cyclin-Dependent Kinase Regulates Small GTPase Rho1p through
Phosphorylation of RhoGEF Tus1p in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Mol Biol Cell 2008 Apr;19(4):1763-71.
Ohya, Y., Sese, J., Yukawa, M., Sano, F., Nakatani, Y., Saito, TL, Saka. A., Fukuda, T., Ishihara, S., Oka, S., Suzuki, G., Watanabe, M., Hirata, A., Ohtani, M., Sawai, H., Fraysse, N., Latge, JP., Francois, JM., Aebi, M., Tanaka, S., Muramatsu, S., Araki, H., Sonoike, K., Nogami, S., Morishita, S. (2005) High-dimensional and large-scale phenotyping of yeast mutants. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A.
102(52):19015-20.
Suzuki, M., Igarashi, R., Sekiya, M., Utsugi, T., Morishita, S., Yukawa, M., Ohya, Y.
(2004) Dynactin is involved in a checkpoint to monitor cell wall synthesis in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Nat Cell Biol. 6:861-71.
Qadota, H., Python, C. P., Inoue, S. B., Arisawa, M., Anraku, Y., Zheng, Y., Watanabe, T., Levin, D. E. and Ohya, Y. (1996) Identification of yeast Rho1p GTPase as a regulatory subunit of 1,3-β-glucan synthase. Science 272: 279-281.
3. Figures:
CalMorph image analysis system useful to examine high-dimensional quantitative phenotypes. Digital images of cell shape (left), actin (middle) and nuclear DNA (right) are shown.
Cell morphologies of various yeast deletion mutants. Superimposed pictures stained with cell wall (green), actin (red) and DNA (blue) are shown.
