Yokobayashi Lab

What's New: Archive

2021/03/01
Proud to introduce Dr. Kamila Mustafina, the first Ph.D. from the Nucleic Acid Chemistry and Engineering Unit. Congratulations!
2021/01/27
We miss our virologist Kei who has moved on to his next position at MIT!
2020/12/01
Conglatulations to Samuel for being awarded a Walter Benjamin fellowship from DFG!
2020/11/10
A review article highlighting sequencing-based assay of ribozymes and deoxyribozymes is now online at Accounts of Chemical Research.
2020/06/15
Welcome to Nao who has started as a new technician.
2020/04/01
Congratulations to Narae for her KAKENHI grant!
2020/01/18
We welcome two new members at the start of the new year! Arriving with a fresh Ph.D. from Germany, Samuel is our new microbiologist. Shiv is our new research intern from the UK who will work with us for about six months.
2019/12/11
Congratulations to Kamila for her first paper published in ACS Synthetic Biology!. With some help from Keisuke, she engineered and analyzed the tandem aptamer-ribozyme fusion architecture as mammalian riboswitches.
2019/11/14
Mohammed's histamine aptamer was turned into a sensor for detecting food poisoning (published in Scientific Reports)!.
2019/09/24
Yatzu started her first rotation with us. Welcome!
2019/09/02
Yohei coedited the annual Synthetic Biology section in Current Opinion in Chemical Biology with Prof. Hirohide Saito at Kyoto University, focusing on mammalian synthetic biology. Check out 9 reviews including one on mammalian riboswitches written by Yohei.
2019/08/27
Yoko's work on minimizing an RNA ligase ribozyme using deep sequencing is now online in Nucleic Acids Research. Such small ribozymes may resemble ancient catalysts in the RNA world.
2019/08/26
Good luck to Laura who is leaving Okinawa to pursue her Ph.D. in Europe.
2019/08/16
Kei's paper on using a riboswitch to control vesicular stomatitus virus (VSV) vector is now published in ACS Synthetic Biology in which he demonstrated multiple cycles of ON/OFF gene regulation up to 12 days.
2019/07/09
Welcome to our new technician, Mayumi.
2019/06/18
Mohammed's work on histamine-responsive riboswitch and artificial cells is published in Journal of the American Chemical Society (see OIST press release). This was a great collaboration with the Matsuura group at Osaka University who prepared and characterized beautiful liposomes containing our riboswitch!
2019/05/23
Farewell to Mohammed and Dhamodharan, two of the original members of our Unit at OIST. Best of luck to both!
2019/05/11
Shungo and Yoko's work on RNA molecular machine published in Nucleic Acids Research. Covered in an OIST news story with a cute artwork.
2019/04/01
New JSPS KAKENHI grants awarded to Keisuke, Kei, Mohammed, Yoko, and Yohei.
2019/04/01
Welcome to our new postdoc Vyankat Sontakke!
2019/03/25
Goodbye and good luck to Kinuko who completed her internship and returned to Tokyo to finish her Ph.D.!
2019/02/14
Yohei wrote a short review on applications of high-throughput sequencing to ribozyme investigations in Methods.
2019/02/02
Mohammed's new paper in ACS Synthetic Biology demonstrates an exceptional ON/OFF ratio (3900) of gene expression by amplifying riboswitch response.
2019/01/17
Welcome to Kinuko, a research intern from Tokyo who will be working with us for two months.
2018/09/18
Welcome back to Gear who will start his thesis project in our unit!
2018/08/06
We were awarded a JSPS Challenging Research (Exploratory) grant to develop chemically responsive artificial cells.
2018/05/31
Dhamodharan (with Yoko and Mohammed) synthesized a photocaged guanine to control gene expression by light. The paper is now online at Chemical Communications.
2018/05/01
Keisuke joins as a new postdoc, and Aleksandra will spend this term in our unit as a rotation student!
2018/01/19
Shungo's work on HDV-like ribozyme is now online at ACS Synthetic Biology.
2018/01/17
New Year brings new members to the lab. Takeshi starts his thesis research, Bidesh rotates with us for the term, Keisuke from Osaka University starts his 9-week internship, and Narae joins as a new postdoc.
2017/10/24
Mohammed's work highlighted in OIST News Center.
2017/09/13
New academic year brings many new faces: Laura joins as new technician, Gear and Charles as rotation students, and Dalmira is back to stay for thesis project.
2017/08/21
Mohammed's paper on controlling gene expression in a predatory bacterium called Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus is now online in ACS Synthetic Biology!.
2017/05/30
Welcome to our rotation students for the Spring term: Mai and Hsiao-Chiao.
2017/04/19
Shungo and Kei's work on new pistol ribozymes was published in ACS Synthetic Biology!.
2017/01/12
Welcome to our rotation student for the Winter term, Takeshi.
2016/09/09
Welcome to Dalmira who is doing a rotation this term with us.
2016/07/28
Shungo's work on twister ribozyme was published in Angewandte Chemie (Open Access)!. We generated and assayed 10,296 single and double mutants of a twister ribozyme by deep sequencing.
2016/05/17
Welcome to our first OIST rotation student, Kamila Mustafina.
2016/02/04
Kei Takahashi joined our group as a postdoc.
2015/08/03
Our new group members have arrived at OIST.
2015/07/09
We are finally in Okinawa!
2015/03/31
Shungo's paper titled "High-throughput assay and engineering of self-cleaving ribozymes by sequencing" was published Nucleic Acids Research. We used high-throughput sequencing to assay >1000 ribozyme variants at once.
2014/10/30
Farhima's RNA amplifier circuit paper was published in ACS Synthetic Biology!
2014/09/25
Transition: We are moving to Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) in Okinawa, Japan in Summer 2015 to establish Nucleic Acid Chemistry and Engineering Unit. The new Unit will build on the current research programs focusing on RNA engineering while expanding the scope to study chemistry and biological applications of nucleic acids in general. OIST also runs an international graudate program with full financial support. Interested propective students should refer to their graduate program website.
OIST campus (OIST/Ginter)