Research interests

Nature has developed and used enzymes to carry out reactions for long period. Researchers have used enzymes for organic reactions because enzymes are highly active and selective as catalysts. However, they often met difficulties to use them when they wanted to use unnatural substrates. For example, enzymes often do not show enough activity or selectivity toward unnatural substrates. To tackle these problems, they have monitored and mimicked nature. One of the ways to solve the problems is medium, substrate, or protein engineering. Biocatalysis deals with these research areas.

My research is focused on biocatalysis. Biocatalysis is interdisciplinary research. Based on understanding how an enzyme works, it is an approach to use enzymes in useful reactions and to find a better one for a specific reaction. To find a useful enzyme, one can test commercial enzymes or mutate an enzyme using protein engineering skills. My research group mainly focuses on protein engineering to find better enzymes and to develop new functions into an enzyme. In addition, computer modeling is used to identify the residues to be modified in enzymes and organic synthesis to make substrates.

The students in my research group will learn all these basic technologies such as protein engineering, computer modeling, organic synthesis, and high-throughput screening. These skills are of importance in many industrial areas such as pharmaceutical and synthetic companies.

Current research projects

• Development of lipase mutants having unnatural function

• Development of cell permeable proteins as a protein carrier

• Development of artificial enzymes

• Biofunctionalization of metal organic frameworks

What's new?