Toshiyuki Okano
Official Title
Professor
Department of Electrical Engineering and Bioscience
Faculty of Science and Engineering
Examples of Classes Taught
Current Topics in Bioscience
Research Fields
Photobiology, Chronobiology, Quantum Biology
Research
Structure and function of photoreceptor proteins in animals
Living organisms are exposed to day-night cycles of sunlight and have a variety of functions such as vision and circadian rhythms in order to adapt to environmental changes. For example, animals have visual photoreceptor proteins (rhodopsin and cone opsins) in the retina. Many animals have opsins in the extraretinal photoreceptive tissues such as the brain and the skin to serve the circadian physiology and body color change. In addition to the opsin family proteins, which have retinal as the chromophore, animals have the other phtoroceptor protein cryptochromes that have FAD chromophore. Cryptochrome family includes many uncharacterized molecules and some are suggested to paly a role for magnetoreception driven by photons. In our laboratory, we are investigating the structure and function of these photoreceptive molecules to reveal the novel molecular mechanisms and apply the obtained implications to prootion of human health.
Selected publications
1. Okano K., Ozawa S., Sato H., Kodachi S., Ito M., Miyadai T., Takemura A. and Okano T.
Light- and circadian-controlled genes respond to a broad light spectrum in Puffer Fish-derived Fugu eye cells.
Sci. Rep. 7: 46150 (2017). doi: 10.1038/srep46150
2. Sakata R., Kabutomori R., Okano K., Mitsui H., Takemura A., Miwa T., Yamamoto H. and Okano T.
Rhodopsin in the Dark Hot Sea: Molecular Analysis of Rhodopsin in a Snailfish, Careproctus rhodomelas, Living near the Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vent.
PLoS ONE 10: e0135888 (2015). doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0135888
3. Mitsui H., Maeda T., Yamaguchi C., Tsuji Y., Watari R., Kubo Y., Okano K. and Okano T.
Overexpression in yeast, photocycle, and in vitro structural change of an avian putative magnetoreceptor Cryptochrome4.
Biochemistry 54: 1908-1917, 2015. doi:10.1021/bi501441u
4. Toda R., Okano K., Takeuchi Y., Yamauchi C., Fukushiro M., Takemura A. and Okano T.
Hypothalamic expression and moonlight-independent changes of Cry3 and Per4 implicate their roles in lunar clock oscillators of the lunar-responsive goldlined spinefoot.
PLoS ONE, 9 : e109119, 2014. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0109119
5. Takebe A., Furutani T., Wada T., Koinuma M., Kubo Y., Okano K. and Okano T.
Zebrafish respond to the geomagnetic field by bimodal and group-dependent orientation.
Sci. Rep. 2: 727, 2012. doi:10.1038/srep00727
6. Watari R., Yamaguchi C., Zemba W., Kubo Y., Okano K. and Okano T.
Light-dependent structural change of chicken retinal Cryptochrome4.
J. Biol. Chem. 287: 42634-42641, 2012. doi:10.1074/jbc.M112.395731