Official Title

Professor
Department of Life Science and Medical Bioscience
School of Advanced Science and Engineering, Waseda University

Research Fields

Cytoskeletal Regulation・Chromosome Morphology,Control of Gene Expression・Meiosis・Gamete Formation

Research

Focus on molecular mechanisms of chromosome segregation by microtubules in meiosis
Meiosis is the specialized cell division for reproduction. Failure in chromosome segregation in meiosis may cause birth defects including Down syndrome. Despite of peoples’ deep interest, the molecular mechanisms for those phenomena have been poorly understood. We aim to investigate the mechanisms using fission yeast and higher organisms. Our live-cell imaging of three-colored microscopy uncovered many unknown phenomena in mitosis and meiosis. We focus on functions and behavior of microtubules, which we found of particular importance in meiosis.

Selected publications

1. Reconstructing regulatory pathways by systematically mapping protein localization interdependency networks
James Dodgson, Anatole Chessel, Federico Vaggi, Marco Giordan, Miki Yamamoto, Kunio Arai, Marisa Madrid, Marco Geymonat, Juan Francisco Abenza, Jose Cansado, Masamitsu Sato, Attila Csikasz-Nagy, Rafael E Carazo-Salas
bioRxiv (2017) 116749

2. Module-based construction of plasmids for chromosomal integration of the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe
*Yasutaka Kakui, Tomonari Sunaga, Kunio Arai, James Dodgson, Liang Ji, Attila Attila Csik?sz-Nagy, Rafael Carazo-Salas and *Masamitsu Sato
Open Biology (2015) 5(6):150054.

3. The Kinetochore Protein Kis1/Eic1/Mis19 Ensures the Integrity of Mitotic Spindles through Maintenance of Kinetochore Factors Mis6/CENP-I and CENP-A
Hayato Hirai, Kunio Arai, Ryo Kariyazono, Masayuki Yamamoto and *Masamitsu Sato
PLoS ONE (2014) 9(11):e111905.

4. Optimization of the analogue-sensitive Cdc2/Cdk1 mutant by in vivo selection eliminates physiological limitations to its use in cell cycle analysis
Yuki Aoi, Shigehiro A. Kawashima, Viesturs Simanis, Masayuki Yamamoto, *Masamitsu Sato
Open Biology (2014) 4(7):140063

5. CDK-dependent phosphorylation of Alp7-Alp14 (TACC-TOG) promotes its nuclear accumulation and spindle microtubule assembly
Naoyuki Okada, Takashi Toda, Masayuki Yamamoto and *Masamitsu Sato
Molecular Biology of the Cell (2014) 25(13):1969-1982.

6. Microtubules and Alp7-Alp14 (TACC-TOG) reposition chromosomes before meiotic segregation
Yasutaka Kakui, *Masamitsu Sato, Naoyuki Okada, Takashi Toda and Masayuki Yamamoto
Nature Cell Biology(2013) 15(7):786-796.

7. Time-lapse single-cell transcriptomics reveals modulation of histone H3 for dormancy breaking in fission yeast Hayato Tsuyuzaki, Masahito Hosokawa, Koji Arikawa, Takuya Yoda, Naoyuki Okada, Haruko Takeyama, *Masamitsu Sato Nature Communications (2020) 11(1):1265. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-15060-y

8. CLASP promotes microtubule bundling in metaphase spindle independently of Ase1/PRC1 in fission yeast Hirohisa Ebina, Liang Ji, *Masamitsu Sato Biology Open (2019) bio.045716 doi: 10.1242/bio.045716

9. Kinetochore-mediated outward force promotes spindle pole separation in fission yeast Yutaka Shirasugi and *Masamitsu Sato Molecular Biology of the Cell (2019) 30(22):2802-2813 doi:10.1091/mbc.E19-07-0366