Kuraku Group • Molecular Life History Laboratory::National Institute of Genetics

Kuraku Group • Molecular Life History Laboratory

Decoding evolution through the mechanism of genomic readout

Faculty

KURAKU, Shigehiro

Professor

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KAWAGUCHI,Akane

Assistant Professor

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Research Summary

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

1) Elucidating the evolutionary history of genomes by cross-species comparisons
2) Decoding genome evolution mechanisms taking cellular events into account
3) Improving 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

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:e2513676122
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

Kuraku S. Enigmatic Nodal and Lefty gene repertoire discrepancy: Latent evolutionary history revealed by vertebrate-wide phylogeny. Dev Dyn. 2025, in press.
https://doi.org/10.1002/dvdy.710

Kryukov K, Nakahama N, Kuraku S. Genome assembly catalog for species in the Japanese Red List: unlocking endangered biodiversity through genomic inventory. F1000Res. 2024, Jun; 13:583
https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.149793.2