RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research Laboratory for Advanced Biomolecular Engineering
Team Leader: Shunsuke Tagami (Ph.D.)
Research Summary

Our team aims to engineer functional bio-macromolecules applicable to medical and basic biological researches, by integrating technologies in synthetic and structural biology including in vitro reconstruction of target protein complexes, in vitro evolution of protein/RNA, X-ray crystallography, and structure based protein engineering.
We are also trying to experimentally reconstruct evolutionary pathway from primordial peptides to elaborate proteins.
Keywords
- Protein evolution
- Protein structure
- Functional peptides
Selected Publications
Papers with an asterisk(*) are based on research conducted outside of RIKEN.
- 1.
Yagi S, Tagami S.:
"An ancestral fold reveals the evolutionary link between RNA polymerase and ribosomal proteins"
Nature Communications 15, 5938 (2024). - 2.
Chaban A, Minakhin L, Goldobina E, Bae B, Hao Y, Borukhov S, Putzeys L, Boon M, Kabinger F, Lavigne R, Makarova KS, Koonin EV, Nair SK, Tagami S, Severinov K and Sokolova ML.:
"Tail-tape-fused virion and non-virion RNA polymerases of a thermophilic virus with an extremely long tail"
Nature Communications 15, 317 (2024). - 3.
Mohri K, Huynh Nhat KP, Zouda M, Warashina S, Wada Y, Watanabe Y, Tagami S, Mukai H.:
"Lasso peptide microcin J25 variant containing RGD motif as a PET probe for integrin αvβ3 in tumor imaging"
Eur. J. Pharm. Sci. 106339 (2022) - 4.
Alfi A, Popov A, Kumar A, Zhang KYJ, Dubiley S, Severinov K, Tagami S.:
"Cell-Free Mutant Analysis Combined with Structure Prediction of a Lasso Peptide Biosynthetic Protease B2"
ACS Synthetic Biology 11, 2022–2028 (2022) - 5.
Li P, Holliger P, Tagami S.:
"Hydrophobic-cationic peptides modulate RNA polymerase ribozyme activity by accretion"
Nature Communications 13, 3050 (2022) - 6.
Yagi S, Padhi AK, Vucinic J, Barbe S, Schiex T, Nakagawa R, Simoncini D, Zhang KYJ, Tagami S.:
"Seven Amino Acid Types Suffice to Create the Core Fold of RNA Polymerase"
J. Am. Chem. Soc. 143, 15998–16006 (2021) - 7.
Sumida T, Dubiley S, Wilcox B, Severinov K, Tagami S.:
"Structural Basis of Leader Peptide Recognition in Lasso Peptide Biosynthesis Pathway"
ACS Chemical Biology, 14, 1619–1627 (2019) - 8.
*Tagami S, Attwater J, Holliger P.:
"Simple peptides derived from the ribosomal core potentiate RNA polymerase ribozyme function"
Nature Chemistry, 9, 325-332 (2017). - 9.
Tagami S, Sekine S, Minakhin L, Esyunina D, Akasaka R, Shirouzu M, Kulbachinskiy A, Severinov K, Yokoyama S.:
"Structural basis for promoter specificity switching of RNA polymerase by a phage factor"
Genes & Development 28, 521-531 (2014). - 10.
Tagami S, Sekine S, Kumarevel T, Hino N, Murayama Y, Kamegamori S, Yamamoto M, Sakamoto K, Yokoyama S.:
"Crystal structure of bacterial RNA polymerase bound with a transcription inhibitor protein."
Nature 468, 978-982 (2010).
Recent Research Results
Related Links
Lab Members
Principal investigator
- Shunsuke Tagami
- Team Leader
Core members
- Akira Wada
- Senior Research Scientist
- Almasul Alfi
- Research Scientist
- Peiying Li
- Research Scientist
- Subrata Dasgupta
- Postdoctoral Researcher
- Kazumasa Ohtake
- Visiting Scientist
- Sota Yagi
- Visiting Scientist
- Takuto Furuhashi
- Junior Research Associate
- Aleksandr Popov
- Junior Research Associate
- Tami Kosuge
- Assistant
Contact Information
Room C516, Central Building,
1-7-22 Suehiro-cho, Tsurumi-ku,
Yokohama City, Kanagawa,
230-0045, Japan
Tel: +81-(0)45-503-9205