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RIKEN ECL Research Team / RIKEN ECL Research Unit Biophenomena Engineering RIKEN ECL Research Team

RIKEN ECL Team Leader: Makoto Saito (Ph.D.)

Research Summary

Makoto Saito

Over 10 million species of organisms exist on Earth, and the benefits these organisms have provided to humanity are immeasurable. For example, the recent adaptation of genome editing technology from the unique CRISPR-Cas immune system of prokaryotes has revolutionized the world. Among the still undiscovered biological systems in nature, I believe there must be some that hold the potential to bring even greater benefits to humanity. By leveraging artificial intelligence, we aim to discover these novel systems, analyze their functions, and engineer them into molecular tools. With these tools in hand, we hope to develop next-generation therapeutics for hard-to-treat diseases.

Main Research Fields

  • Biological Sciences

Related Research Fields

  • Engineering
  • Informatics
  • Biology
  • Medicine, Dentistry & Pharmacy
  • Molecular biology
  • Bioengineering
  • Synthetic biology

Keywords

  • Biological diversity
  • Artificial intelligence
  • Molecular engineering
  • Next-generation therapeutics

Selected Publications

Papers with an asterisk(*) are based on research conducted outside of RIKEN.

  • 1.*Xu, P.†, Saito, M.†, Faure, G., Maguire, S., Vo, S., Wilkinson, M. E., Kuang, H., Wang, B., Rice, W. J., Macrae, R. K., Zhang, F.:
    "Structural insights into the diversity and DNA cleavage mechanism of Fanzor."
    Cell 187, 5238-5252 (2024).
  • 2.*Saito, M.†, Xu, P.†, Faure, G., Maguire, S., Kannan, S., Altae-Tran, H., Vo, S., Desimone, A., Macrae,R. K., Zhang, F.:
    "Fanzor is a eukaryotic programmable RNA-guided endonuclease."
    Nature 620, 660-668 (2023).
  • 3.*Faure, G.†, Saito, M.†, Benler, S.†, Peng, I.†, Wolf, Y. I., Strecker, J., Altae-Tran, H., Neumann, E., Li, D., Makarova, K. S., Macrae, R. K., Koonin, E. V. and Zhang, F.:
    "Modularity and diversity of target selectors in Tn7 transposons."
    Molecular Cell 83, 2122-2136 (2023).
  • 4.*Kreitz, J., Friedrich, M. J., Guru, A., Lash, B., Saito, M., Macrae, R. K. and Zhang, F.:
    "Programmable protein delivery with a bacterial contractile injection system."
    Nature 616, 357-364 (2023).
  • 5.*Saito, M.†, Ladha, A.†, Strecker, J.†, Faure, G.†, Neumann, E., Altae-Tran, H., Macrae, R. K. and Zhang,F.:
    "Dual modes of CRISPR-associated transposon homing."
    Cell 184, 2441-2453 (2021).
  • 6.*Joung, J., Ladha, A., Saito, M., Kim, N. G., Woolley, A. E., Segel, M., Barretto, R. P. J., Ranu, A., Macrae, R. K., Faure, G., Ioannidi, E. I., Krajeski, R. N., Bruneau, R., Huang, M.W., Yu, X.G., Li, J. Z., Walker, B. D., Hung, D. T., Greninger, A. L., Jerome, K. R., Gootenberg, J. S., Abudayyeh, O. O., Zhang, F.:
    "Detection of SARS-CoV-2 with SHERLOCK One-Pot Testing."
    New England Journal of Medicine 383, 1492-1494 (2020).
  • 7.*Saito, M., Hess, D., Eglinger, J., Fritsch, A. W., Kreysing, M., Weinert, B. T., Choudhary, C., Matthias, P.:
    "Acetylation of intrinsically disordered regions regulates phase separation."
    Nature Chemical Biology 15, 51-61 (2019).
  • 8.*Miyake, Y. Keusch, J. J., Wang, L., Saito, M., Hess, D., Wang, X., Melancon, B. J., Helquist, P., Gut, H., Matthias, P.:
    "Structural insights into HDAC6 tubulin deacetylation and its selective inhibition."
    Nature Chemical Biology 12, 748-754 (2016).
  • 9.*Saito, M., Kato, Y., Ito, E., Fujimoto, J., Ishikawa, K., Doi, A., Kumazawa, K., Matsui, A., Takebe, S., Ishida, T., Azuma, S., Mochizuki, H., Kawamura, Y., Yanagisawa, Y., Honma, R., Imai, J., Ohbayashi, H., Goshima, N., Semba, K., Watanabe, S.:
    "Expression screening of 17q12-21 amplicon reveals GRB7 as an ERBB2-dependent oncogene."
    FEBS Letters 586, 1708-14 (2012).

Related Links

Lab Members

Principal investigator

Makoto Saito
RIKEN ECL Team Leader

Careers

Position Deadline
Seeking a few Research Scientists or Postdoctoral Researchers (W24327) Open until filled

Contact Information

Bioscience Building N105
2-1 Hirosawa, Wako, Saitama 351-0198, Japan
Email: makoto.saito@riken.jp

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