1. Goals
(1) To isolate useful genes such as those related to the biosynthesis of
functional substances by utilizing comprehensive protein analysis, identify
their functions.
(2) To elucidate the mechanism of
protein structure formation and to establish a technology to control the
structure
(3) To clarify the correlation
between protein structure and its function and to establish a method to
estimate the function
(4) To clarify the functions of
unknown genes based on their protein structure.
2. Research plans
1) Comprehensive analysis of protein structure and its function, isolation
of useful genes, and identification of their functions
To isolate and define the time-dependent and tissue-specific accumulation
of proteins during development in rice
To analyze the partial amino acid sequences of such proteins or post-translational
modifications and to compare the results with the information obtained
from the base sequence of cDNA
To isolate the genes of functional proteins and clarify their functions
by introducing them into plants or other methods
2) Elucidation of the correlation between protein structure and function
To explain the mechanisms of
formation of steric structures, such as useful substance-producing enzymes and
functional proteins within living organisms, and the correlation between steric
structure and function
To establish a technology to control
steric structures that will contribute to the production of proteins with new
functions.
3) Development of method to estimate steric structure of proteins and their
functions
To create a database of information on
the conditions for protein expression and post-translational modifications,
predict the functions using such database, and upgrade methods for estimating
functional domains in the amino acid sequences and predicting the steric
structures and functions
4) Identification of the functions of unknown genes based on the steric
structure of proteins and correlation between proteins
To conduct the mass expression of
gene products using a full-length rice cDNA library and identify their
functions based on the analysis of the steric structure of the obtained proteins.
To identify the signal transduction network based on the analysis of interaction
among proteins. |