RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science Drug Discovery Seeds Development Unit
Unit Leader: Minoru Yoshida (D.Agr.)
Research Summary

The mission of the Seed Compounds Exploratory Unit is to contribute to searching for active compound candidates (hit compounds) for drug targets through high throughput screening (HTS) from compound libraries and, further, to identifying hit compounds (true hits) that truly act on the targets.
Main Research Fields
- Chemistry
Related Research Fields
- Biology
Keywords
- Chemical Biology
- Epigenetics
- Mode of Action
- Transcriptional Regulation
- Chemical Screening for Drug Discovery
Selected Publications
- 1.
Noritsugu, K., Suzuki, T., Dodo, K., Ohgane, K., Ichikawa, Y., Koike, K., Morita, S., Umehara, T., Ogawa, K., Sodeoka, M., Dohmae, N., Yoshida, M., Ito, A.:
"Lysine long-chain fatty acylation regulates the TEAD transcription factor."
Cell Rep. 42(4), 112388 (2023) - 2.
Takase, S., Hiroyama, T., Shirai, F., Maemoto, Y., Nakata, A., Arata, M., Matsuoka, S., Sonoda, T., Niwa, H., Sato, S., Umehara, T., Shirouzu, M., Nishigaya, Y., Sumiya, T., Hashimoto, N., Namie, R., Usui, M., Ohishi, T., Ohba, S., Kawada, M., Hayashi, Y., Harada, H., Yamaguchi, T., Shinkai, Y., Nakamura, Y., Yoshida, M., Ito, A.:
"A specific G9a inhibitor unveils BGLT3 lncRNA as a universal mediator of chemically induced fetal globin gene expression."
Nat. Commun. 14, 23 (2023) - 3.
Sasaki, K., Suzuki, M., Sonoda, T., Schneider-Poetsch, T., Ito, A., Takagi, M., Fujishiro, S., Sohtome, Y., Dodo, K., Umehara, T., Aburatani, H., Shin-ya, K., Nakao, Y., Sodeoka, M., Yoshida, M.:
"Visualization of the dynamic interaction between nucleosomal histone H3K9 tri-methylation and HP1α chromodomain in living cells."
Cell Chem. Biol. 29(7), 1153-1161.e5. (2022) - 4.
Chhipi-Shrestha, J.K., Schneider-Poetsch, T., Suzuki, T., Mito, M., Khan, K., Dohmae, N., Iwasaki, S., Yoshida, M.:
"Splicing modulators elicit global translational repression by condensate-prone proteins translated from introns."
Cell Chem. Biol. 29(2), 259-275 (2022) - 5.
Kato, H., Nemoto, K., Shimizu, M., Abe, A., Asai, S., Ishihama, N., Matsuoka, S., Daimon, T., Ojika, M.,
Kawakita, K., Onai, K., Shirasu, K., Yoshida, M., Ishiura, M., Takemoto. D., Takano, Y., Terauchi, R.:
"Recognition of pathogen-derived sphingolipids in Arabidopsis."
Science, 376, 857-860 (2022) - 6.
Yoshimoto, R., Chhipi-Shrestha, J.K., Schneider-Poetsch, T., Furuno, M., Burroughs, A.M., Noma, S., Suzuki, H., Hayashizaki, Y., Mayeda, A., Nakagawa, S., Kaida, D., Iwasaki, S., Yoshida, M.:
"Spliceostatin A interaction with SF3B1 limits U1 snRNP availability and causes premature cleavage and polyadenylation."
Cell Chem. Biol. 28(9), 1356-1365.e4. (2021) - 7.
Kobayashi, H., Hatakeyama, H., Nishimura, H., Yokota, M., Suzuki, S., Tomabechi, Y., Shirouzu, M., Osada, H., Mimaki, M., Goto, Y., Yoshida, M.:
"Chemical reversal of abnormalities in cells carrying mitochondrial DNA mutations."
Nat. Chem. Biol. 17(3), 335-343 (2021) - 8.
Shirai, F., Mizutani, A., Yashiroda, Y., Tsumura, T., Kano, Y., Muramatsu, Y., Chikada, T., Yuki, H., Niwa, H., Sato, S., Washizuka, K., Koda, Y., Mazaki, Kyu Jang, M., Yoshida, H., Nagamori, A., Okue, M., Watanabe, T., Kitamura, K., Shitara, E., Honma, T., Umehara, T., Shirouzu, M., Fukami, T., Seimiya, H., Yoshida, M., Koyama, H.:
"Design and Discovery of an Orally Efficacious Spiroindolinonebased Tankyrase Inhibitor for the Treatment of Colon Cancer."
J Med Chem., 63, 4183-4204 (2020) - 9.
Schneider-Poetsch, T., Yoshida, M.:
"Along the central dogma-controlling gene expression with small molecules."
Annu. Rev. Biochem. 87, 391-420 (2018) - 10.
Piotrowski, J.S., Li, S.C., Deshpande, R., Simpkins, S.W., Nelson, J., Yashiroda, Y., Barber, J.M., Safizadeh, H., Wilson, E., Okada, H., Gebre, A.A., Kubo, K., Torres, N., Leblanc, M.B., Andrusiak, K., Okamoto, R., Yoshimura, M., van Leeuwen, J., Shirahige, K., Baryshnikova, A., Brown, G., Saito, T., Costanzo, M., Andrews, B., Ohya, Y., Osada, H., Yoshida, M., Myers, C.L., Boone, C.:
"Functional annotation of chemical libraries across diverse biological processes."
Nat. Chem. Biol. 13(9), 982-993 (2017)
Related Links
Lab Members
Principal investigator
- Minoru Yoshida
- Unit Leader
Core members
- Akiko Idei
- Deputy Unit Leader
- Ken Matsumoto
- Senior Research Scientist
- Seiji Matsuoka
- Technical Scientist
- Kousiki Mino
- Senior Technical Staff
- Shin-ya Okamoto
- Senior Technical Staff
- Satoko Maeda
- Technical Staff I
- Iku Kuwahara
- Technical Staff I
- Michiru Iwashita
- Technical Staff I
- Haruna Nishimura
- Technical Staff I
- Mari Agawa
- Technical Staff I
- Takeshi Sonoda
- Technical Staff I
- Yasue Ichikawa
- Technical Staff I
- Junko Mikuni
- Technical Staff I
- Mayumi Arata
- Technical Staff I
- Akiko Nakata
- Technical Staff II
- Taeko Wakana
- Technical Staff II
- Toshie Kaizuka
- Technical Staff II
- Ryotaro Yoshizumi
- Junior Research Associate