RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science Biomacromolecules Research Team

Team Leader: Keiji Numata (Ph.D.)

Japanese Page

Research Summary

"Enzyme Research Team" aims to create "new functional enzymes" as well as to develop "new plants and microorganisms" using organellar engineering to synthesize biopolymers such as polyamide/poly(amino acid)/peptide. One of the final goals of the laboratory is to develop the bioprocess to produce and design the biopolymers as structural materials.

Main Research Fields

Engineering

Related Research Fields

Chemistry
Biological Sciences
Agricultural Sciences

Keywords

polypeptide
structural protein
enzymatic polymerization
marine photosynthetic bacteria
Organelle engineering

Selected Publications

1.Kosuke Tsuchiya, Keiji Numata.:
"Chemoenzymatic synthesis of polypeptides as functional and structural materials"
Macromolecular Bioscience, in press.
2.Kenjiro Yazawa, Joan Gimenez-Dejoz, Hiroyasu Masunaga, Takaaki Hikima, Keiji Numata.:
"Chemoenzymatic synthesis of a peptide containing nylon monomer units for thermally processable peptide material application"
Polymer Chemistry, in press.
3.Kousuke Tsuchiya, Keiji Numata.:
"Chemoenzymatic synthesis of polypeptides containing the unnatural amino acid 2-aminoisobutyric acid"
Chemical Communications, Volume 53, pp7318-7321, 2017.
4.Keiji Numata, Nao Ifuku, Hiroyasu Masunaga, Takaaki Hikima, Takamasa Sakai.:
"Silk resin with hydrated dual chemical-physical crosslinks achieves high strength and toughness"
Biomacromolecules, Volume 6, pp 1937-1946, 2017.
5.Ting-Yu Lin, Hiroyasu Masunaga, Ryota Sato, Ali D. Malay, Kiminori Toyooka, Takaaki Hikima, Keiji Numata.:
"Liquid crystalline granules align in a hierarchical structure to produce spider dragline microfibrils"
Biomacromolecules, Volume 18(4), pp1350–1355, 2017.
6.Kousuke Tsuchiya, Hiroyasu Masunaga, Keiji Numata.:
"Tensile reinforcement of silk films by the addition of telechelic-type polyalanine"
Biomacromolecules, Volume 18(3), pp1002–1009, 2017.
7.Kousuke Tsuchiya, Keiji Numata.:
"Chemical synthesis of multiblock copolypeptides inspired by spider dragline silk proteins"
ACS Macro Letters, Volume 6, pp103–106, 2017.
8.Takeshi Yoshizumi, Miwa Yamada, Mieko Higuchi-Takeuchi, Ken’ichiro Matsumoto, Seiichi Taguchi, Minami Matsui, Keiji Numata.:
"Sucrose supplementation suppressed the growth inhibition in polyhydroxyalkanoate-producing plants"
Plant Biotechnology, Volume 34, 1 pp39-43, 2017.
9.Chayatip Insomphun, Jo-Ann Chuah, Shingo Kobayashi, Tetsuya Fujiki, Keiji Numata.:
"Influence of hydroxyl groups on the cell viability of polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) scaffolds for tissue engineering"
ACS Biomaterials Science and Engineering, in press.
10.Jo-Ann Chuah, Akimasa Matsugami, Fumiaki Hayashi, Keiji Numata.:
"Self-Assembled Peptide-Based System for Mitochondrial-Targeted Gene Delivery: Functional and Structural Insights"
Biomacromolecules, Volume 17(11), pp3547–3557, 2016.