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Division of Population Genetics • Saitou Group

Evolution of organisms at genetic/genomic level

Professor 　SAITOU, Naruya 　 saitounr
Assistant Professor SUMIYAMA, Kenta ksumiyam

Homepage URL : http://sayer.lab.nig.ac.jp/index-j.html

We study evolution of organisms at the genetic and genomic levels through computer analyses and wet experiments. We are particularly interested in primate and mammalian evolution toward human. Themes of our study are:

• Analysis of genome evolution: Lineage-specific evolutionary changes are studied at different levels of organism groups, such as vertebrates, mammals, primates, and human.
• Genome exavating anthropology: We obtain morphological phenotypes of living humans thorough X-ray CT and NMR and will elucidate their genomic bases.
• DNA analysis of human populations: We are studying evolutionary history of modern humans, in particular, Asian populations, using various polymorphic DNA markers for modern as well as ancient populations.
• Development of nucleotide sequence analysis system: We developed new system MISHIMA which can multiply align many bacrterial genome-size sequences.
• Evolution of developmental regulation: We are studying cis- control elements of the developmental genes by sequence analysis and gene transfer experiments of large scale genomic clones.
• Other themes: blood group gene evolution, duplicated gene evolution, and analysis of introgression between closely related species.

Skeletal images of living human individuals using CT. From Saitou et al. (2011).

Saitou, N., Kimura, R., Fukase, H., Yogi, A., Murayama, S., and Ishida, H. (2011). Advanced CT images reveal nonmetric cranial variations in living humans. Anthropological Science (in press).

Matsunami, M., Sumiyama, K., and Saitou, N. (2010). Evolution of conserved non-coding sequences within the vertebrate Hox clusters through the two-round whole genome duplications revealed by phylogenetic footprinting analysis. J. Mol. Evol. 71, 427-436.

Oota, S., Kawamura, K., Kawai, Y., and Saitou, N. (2010). A new framework for studying the isochore evolution: estimation of the equilibrium GC content based on the temporal mutation rate model. Genome Biol. Evol. 2, 558-571.

Ezawa, K., Ikeo, K., Gojobori, T., and Saitou, N. (2010). Evolutionary Pattern of Gene Homogenization between Primate-Specific paralogs after human and macaque speciation using the 4-2-4 method. Mol. Biol. Evol. 27, 2152-2171.

Kryukov, K. and Saitou, N. (2010). MISHIMA - a new method for high speed multiple alignment of nucleotide sequences of bacterial genome scale data. BMC Bioinformatics 11, 142.

Sumiyama, K., Kawakami, K., and Yagita, K. (2010). A simple and highly efficient transgenesis method in mice with the Tol2 transposon system and cytoplasmic microinjection. Genomics 95, 306-311.

Kitano, T., Satou, M., and Saitou, N. (2010) Evolution of two Rh blood group-related genes of the amphioxus species Branchiostoma floridae. Genes and Genetic Systems 85, 121-127.

Takahashi, M., Krukov, K., and Saitou, N. (2009) Estimation of bacterial species phylogeny through oligonucleotide frequency distances. Genomics 93, 525-533.


Professor SAITOU, Naruya saitounr	Assistant Professor SUMIYAMA, Kenta ksumiyam

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