Meet our scientists! 2020

Old and defective proteins need to be degraded by cells. Proteins destined for degradation are first tagged with ubiquitin, a molecule that can be covalently attached to proteins. Specific types of ubiquitination direct proteins for degradation by proteasomes. Sayaka Yasuda, a senior scientist in the Protein Metabolism Project, studies proteasomal degradation.

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How are old, damaged proteins and organelles degraded in cells? Defects in degradation cause devastating diseases including Parkinson’s disease in humans. Koji Yamano, a senior scientist in the ubiquitin project at TMIMS has been working to understand the mechanisms involved in degradation of defective mitochondria.

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Neurodegenerative diseases are thought to be caused by the accumulation of toxic protein aggregates. Genjiro Suzuki, a senior scientist in the Dementia Research Project has been studying how similar protein aggregates cause different neurodegenerative diseases with different toxicities and symptoms.

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