Molecular Life History Laboratory

Kuraku Group

Decoding evolution through the mechanism of genomic readout

Faculty

KURAKU, Shigehiro
Professor

skuraku@nig.ac.jp

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KAWAGUCHI, Akane
Assistant Professor

akane.kawaguchi@nig.ac.jp

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OGAWA, Yohei

　Project Assistant Professor

yohei.ogawa@nig.ac.jp

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 Lab HP

Research Summary

Our group aims to infer the molecular-level history of com-plex life, based on molecular phylogenetic approaches to evo-lutionarily dissecting biodiversity with increasing knowledge of cellular events from genome-wide profiling. We mainly focus on vertebrates including elusive wildlife with unique phenotypes. Our interests are categorized into these themes.

  1. Deciphering the evolutionary history of genomes
  2. Formulating genome evolution by referring to cellular events
  3. Advancing genome-wide data acquisition and analysis methods
The FoxG group of genes analyzed as a proxy of the whole genome. These genes have different retention patterns (A), evolutionary rates of the genes and flanking genomic regions (B and C, respectively), and embryonic expression domains (D, in catshark embryos). Their inter-relationship and its orchestration within a genome remain largely unexplored. Our group tackles this sort of questions across different genes, biological processes, and animal lineages, to bridge a gap between genotypic and phenotypic evolution.

Selected Publications

  • Kawaguchi YW, Matsumoto R, Kuraku S, Improved genome assembly of whale shark, the world’s biggest fish: revealing intragenomic heterogeneity in molecular evolution, GigaScience, 2026, giag014,
    https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/giag014
  • Kuraku S. Vertebrate Hox clusters as transposon repellents against the genomic accordion model, Zool. Sci. 43: 35-43.
    https://doi.org/10.2108/zs250058
  • Niwa T, Uno Y, Ohishi Y, Kadota M, Aburatani N, Kiyatake I, Katooka D, Yorozu M, Tsuzuki N, Toyoda A, Takagi W, Nakamura M, Kuraku S. Sharks and rays have the oldest vertebrate sex chromosome with unique sex determination mechanisms, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 2025, 122:e251367612
    https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2513676122
  • Hara Y, Kuraku S. Intragenomic mutational heterogeneity: structural and functional insights from gene evolution. Trends Genet. 2025, May; 5:S0168-9525(25)00075-7.
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tig.2025.03.007