The 80th In Silico Megabank Research Seminar will be held on Friday, January 13, 2017.
This Time, we will be welcoming Dr. Shigehiro Kuraku, RIKEN Center for Life Science Technologies as our lecturer, and he will be speaking on “Examination on the origin of human genome using developmental control gene phylome of vertebrate as a clue”.

・Date/Time: January 13 (Friday) 5:00 pm‐6:30 pm
・Venue: Small Conference Room 2(3rd Floor), Tohoku Medical Megabank Building
・Title: Examination on the origin of human genome using developmental control gene phylome of vertebrate as a clue
・Lecturer: Shigehiro Kuraku（RIKEN Center for Life Science Technologies）

＊This lecture is transferable as a class in the medical research-related lecture course.

・Abstract: Combined with the fact that the possibility of omics analysis for non-model organisms has largely expanded, genome-wide perspectives and data-driven approach have enabled discussion on the relationship between molecular evolution and phenotypic evolution in a big picture. I have conducted interspecific comparison of the developmental control gene patterns among vertebrates from the aspects of molecular phylogenetics and genome informatics. In the process, I have found some cases that have spread after becoming too simplified in basic knowledge on EvoDevo such as storability of so-called “tool kit genes.” For example, Pax6 gene which is the vertebrate ortholog of eyeless gene in drosophila has sister genes of Pax4 and Pax10 doubled through 2R genome duplication. Not much attention has pained to these genes.
In addition to the above genes that have been “forgotten,” I have found Bmp16, Hox14, FoxG2, and FoxG3. The main reason that these genes have been “forgotten” is that these disappeared independently from multiple strains, and they possess other common characteristics such that the speed of the evolution of sequences is fast and their expression appears to be more restricted to some areas. What enabled the finding of these “forgotten” genes was the genomic information of organisms belonging to certain strains of vertebrates such as cartilaginous fishes that diverged at relatively early stage of evolution. I am currently organizing genomic information of various species at my laboratory. In this seminar, technological aspects of genomic sequencing as well as evaluation of completeness of genomic sequences of non-human vertebrates are introduced. Additionally, a new hypothesis on the evolution of human genome based on the analysis of the above “forgotten” genes is discussed.

・Organizer: Tomoko Shibata, Kazuharu Misawa, Masao Nagasaki