発生・分化とDNAの複製・修復の構造ゲノム科学

抄録

In 2002, RIKEN and eight university consortiums started on the National Project on Protein Structural and Functional Analyses of Japan (Protein 3000). Our consortium focuses on structural genomics on development and differentiation of organisms and replication and repair of DNA. We plan to determine more than 70 protein structures in 5 years starting at April 2002, and aim to elucidate general molecular mechanisms of cell division, cell differentiation, cell communication and cell death as well as DNA replication and DNA repair. Our consortium comprises 23 members and 6 cooperators who belong to 14 universities, 2 national institutes, and 3 companies in Japan and are divided into 4 groups according to their research fields, i.e., overproduction of recombinant proteins and their functional analysis, technical support for overproduction, three-dimensional structural analysis, and bioinformatics. In addition to the conventional techniques, we take advantage of new recombinant protein production systems such as the cell-free protein expression system using wheat germ extract developed by Prof. Yaeta Endo (Ehime Univ.) and the cspA (cold shock protein A) promoter-based E. coli expression system (Takara Bio Inc.). In the first two years to March 2004, we chose more than 500 target proteins from thermophilic archaea, fruit fly, mouse, human and so on. We determined 84 protein structures, of which 44 were deposited into PDB, filed 15 applications for patents, and published 188 peer-reviewed papers. In this workshop, I am going to talk about our strategy in structural genomics and some results obtained thus far.