Masahiko Imashimizu, Ph. D.
Research Summary
I am broadly interested in molecular science in biological systems. I like interdisciplinary approaches. I like boundless possibility. I like physics and chemistry as well as biology. I like our beautiful planet of water! I realized that although I live on the Water Planet, I can explain almost nothing about the relationship between hydration and biomolecular functions. So, I am currently studying the interaction of sub-THz waves with biological macromolecules and their hydration water using an experimental approach that combines sub-THz irradiation with measurement systems such as dielectric spectroscopy. In the past, I have worked or been educated in solution NMR, RNA medical science, bioinformatics, biochemistry, biophysics (Nanobiology), molecular genetics, X-ray crystallography, microbiology, and plant and algal biology labs (is that all?) in Japan and the U.S. research institutes.
From Molecular Biology to Terabiology
Since April 2018, I joined in a member of Molecular Profiling Research Center for Drug Discovery (Cellular and Molecular Biotechnology Research Institute, since 2020) at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), as a Research Scientist.
Currently, my main research interest is biomolecular functions based on heterogeneous hydration dynamics. How does a biomacromolecular complex like an enzyme work accurately and regulatory in water solvent system dominated by thermal fluctuations? The key to understand this question lies in the fact that, due to hydration, the thermal motions involved in biomolecular functions are temporally and spatially heterogeneous. In particular, the collective intermolecular dynamics of protein and water molecules, which are overlapped in the sub-THz frequency, may be relevant for fundamental processes of expressing protein functions. However, how the fast collective dynamics contribute to much slower protein functions remains largely unknown. We are combining sub-THz excitation and the spectroscopic and biochemical measurements to investigate how externally applied intense sub-THz electromagnetic fields perturb the fast collective dynamics and influence the much slower chemical processes that participate in biomolecular functions.
