From People - School of Science, The University of Tokyo
若林 憲一 (わかばやし けんいち)
WAKABAYASHI, Kenichi
| Title | Research Associate |
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| Affiliation | Department of Biological Sciences (Zoological Science), Graduate School of Science |
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| Room | 141, Faculty of Science Bldg.2, 1F |
| TEL | +81-3-5841-4427 24427 (ext.) |
Research Field
Cell Biology
Research Subject
Structure and motility regulation of eukaryotic cilia and flagella.
Current Research
Eukaryotic cilia and flagella have highly conserved "9+2" structure. On outer doublet microtubules, dyneins, microtubule-based motor proteins, bind at the specific sites with a regular spacing. Currently I am working on two projects about dyneins. i) How dyneins are aligned at the specific sites with a regular spacing? At the base of outer arm dynein, the outer dynein arm docking complex (ODA-DC) mediates the binding of dyneins to microtubules. Now I study structure and properties of the ODA-DC. ii) What is the function(s) of redox-sensitive dynein components? Out of ~30 subunits of outer arm dynein, at least three subunits are redox (reduction-oxidation) sensitive. Now I screen for proteins which interact with those redox-sensitive proteins to investigate how the redox-signaling function in cilia/flagella.
Keywords
Chlamydomonas, dynein, redox, thioredoxin, cilia and flagella