Official Title

Professor
Department of Electrical Engineering and Bioscience
Faculty of Science and Engineering

Research Fields

Synthetic Biology

Research

Synthetic biology: Constructive approach in life science and bioengineering

In this century, exponential accumulation of genomic information and developments in preparation for biomolecules allows construction of innovative genetic circuits with desired function which contributes both in life science and bioengineering. Our strong point in such field, synthetic biology, is Wet-Dry fusion research where we combine traditional knowledge in biology and tools from information science and control engineering. In engineering of genetic code, we have realized codes with less than 20 amino acids species. Such creation of “what life could be” contributes not only origins of life studies, but evolutionary engineering because the newly created tool has unique feature liberated from “universality” among present Earth life.

Selected Publications

1. Ryoji Sekine, Masayuki Yamamura, Shotaro Ayukawa, Kana Ishimatsu, Satoru Akama, Masahiro Takinoue, Masami Hagiya, and *Daisuke Kiga,
"Tunable synthetic phenotypic diversification on Waddington's landscape through autonomous signaling",
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011 Nov 1;108(44):17969-73

2. Shotaro Ayukawa, Yoko Sakai, and *Daisuke Kiga
“Aptazyme-based molecular device that converts a small-molecule input to an RNA output”
Chemical Communications. 48(61):7556-8, inside front cover

3. Akio Kawahara-Kobayashi, Akiko Masuda, Yuhei Araiso, Yoko Sakai,Atsushi Kohda, Masahiko Uchiyama,Shun Asami, Takayoshi Matsuda,Ryuichiro Ishitani,Naoshi Dohmae,Shigeyuki Yokoyama,Takanori Kigawa, Osamu Nureki, *Daisuke Kiga,
“Simplification of the genetic code: restricted diversity of genetically encoded amino acids”,
Nucleic Acids Research, doi: 10.1093/nar/gks786 (2012) featured article (top5% in the journal)

4. Takefumi Moriya, Masayuki Yamamura and *Daisuke Kiga
“Effects of downstream genes on synthetic genetic circuits”.
BMC Systems Biology, 8(S4). doi:10.1186/1752-0509-8-S4-S4, (2014).

5. Akio Kawahara-Kobayashi, Mitsuhiro Hitotsuyanagi, Kazuaki Amikura, and *Daisuke Kiga
“Experimental Evolution of a Green Fluorescent Protein Composed of 19 Unique Amino Acids without Tryptophan”.
Orig Life Evol Biosph., 44(2):75-86, (2014).

6. Kana Ishimatsu, Takashi Hata , Atsushi Mochizuki, Ryoji Sekine, Masayuki Yamamura, and *Daisuke Kiga
“General Applicability of Synthetic Gene-Overexpression for Cell-Type Ratio Control via Reprogramming”.
ACS Synth. Biol., 3 (9):638-644 (2014).

7. Kazuaki Amikura, Yoko Sakai, Shun Asami, and *Daisuke Kiga
“Multiple Amino Acid-Excluded Genetic Codes for Protein Engineering Using Multiple Sets of tRNA Variants”
ACS Synth. Biol., 3(3):140-144 (2014).

Links

http://www.f.waseda.jp/kiga/index.html