My Profile
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My Research Interest
Basic and applied research to comprehend the functional mechanism of proteins that are related to biological membranes from a genome-wide viewpoint. Prediction of the structure and function of membrane proteins, especially focusing on G-protein coupled receptors (GPCR), glycosyltransferase etc. with the aid of protein family classification, structural stability calculation, sub-cellular localization prediction and comparative genome analysis.
The G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) genes are important as they serve as the gateway for signal transduction induced by ligand binding. As nearly half (Drews (1996)) of the drug products available worldwide have been designed to control GPCR-related signal transduction, quite a number of biological and medical researchers have focused their work on the functions of the GPCR family.
Recent progress in the determination of genome sequences and the tertiary structures of GPCRs has accelerated the comprehensive sequence analysis of GPCRs in the whole human genome. However, to perform an overview of the gGPCR universe,h it is necessary to treat a larger data space than that in currently available databases, which should include not only the expressed sequences but also the newly identified sequences that cannot be detected by in vivo experiments, although they definitely exist on the genome sequence and are just waiting for the opportunity to express their functions. For this purpose, we introduce an automatic system for the comprehensive collection of GPCR genes from genome sequences and the SEVENS database (http://sevens.cbrc.jp) that summarizes these genes.
Software and Database
SEVENS (Database of GPCR genes comprehensively identified from eukaryote genomes) 
GRIFFIN (A Program for predicting GPCR-G protein coupling selectivity)
GENUSII (Dtabase System for assigning Genome ORFs to protein 3D structure)
The G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) genes are important as they serve as the gateway for signal transduction induced by ligand binding. As nearly half (Drews (1996)) of the drug products available worldwide have been designed to control GPCR-related signal transduction, quite a number of biological and medical researchers have focused their work on the functions of the GPCR family. Recent progress in the determination of genome sequences and the tertiary structures of GPCRs has accelerated the comprehensive sequence analysis of GPCRs in the whole human genome. However, to perform an overview of the gGPCR universe,h it is necessary to treat a larger data space than that in currently available databases, which should include not only the expressed sequences but also the newly identified sequences that cannot be detected by in vivo experiments, although they definitely exist on the genome sequence and are just waiting for the opportunity to express their functions. For this purpose, we introduce an automatic system for the comprehensive collection of GPCR genes from genome sequences and the SEVENS database (http://sevens.cbrc.jp) that summarizes these genes.