DATE2023.02.09 #Awards & Prizes

Dr. Sonomi Yamaguchi (Department of Biological Sciences) wins the 13th (FY2022) JSPS Ikushi Prize

Disclaimer: machine translated by DeepL which may contain errors.

Yamaguchi Sonomi

We would like to congratulate Ms. Sonomi Yamaguchi, Department of Biological Sciences, for winning the 13th JSPS Ikushi Prize. Ms. Yamaguchi entered the Department of Biological Sciences, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo as a graduate student, and during her master's course, she determined the crystal structure of Drosophila Piwi, a type of Argonaute (Ago) that functions in genome maintenance by suppressing transposon mRNA expression in germ cells, and performed functional analysis to D. student, Dr. Kato determined the crystal structure of Drosophila Piwi, a type of Argonaute (Ago) that works to maintain the genome by repressing transposon mRNA expression, and analyzed its function. D. student determined the high-resolution structure of the Drosophila Dicer-2-R2D2-dsRNA complex using cryo-electron microscopy and performed his own biochemical analysis, which revealed that the R2D2 factor selects virus-derived linear dsRNA and that Dicer siRNA processing and the mechanism of loading into Ago from the weak direction of the double helix. With her tenacity and sense in functional analysis, Yamaguchi solved these previously unsolved problems in RNA interference and greatly advanced the research in this area. She plans to study abroad in the U.S. after obtaining her doctorate to further refine her research, and we sincerely hope that she will grow to become a truly leading female researcher in Japan. I sincerely hope that she will grow up to be a truly leading female researcher in Japan. Congratulations to her!

The 13th (FY2022) JSPS Ikushi Prize
https://www.jsps.go.jp/j-ikushi-prize/index.html

(Responsibility: Professor Osamu Nureki, Department of Biological Sciences)