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| RIKEN Announcement | |
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RIKEN scientists to present research at AAAS 2009 annual meeting | |
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A group of scientists from RIKEN will present their research at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Chicago on Feb. 12-16. In keeping with the theme of the meeting this year, "Our Planet and Its Life: Origins and Futures," the RIKEN group includes researchers doing cutting-edge work on environmental and life-science-related topics, who will give seminars on their research. Dr. Misao Itouga of the Biodynamics Research Team at RIKEN's Plant Science Center in Yokohama will present his team's findings on using moss to remove heavy metal contaminants from water. Such bryo-filtration technology will lead to safe and effective methods for both cleaning toxic contaminants from water, and extracting valuable resources from the environment. Mr. Che-Hsiu Shih of the Photon Science Research Division Structural Materials Science Laboratory at RIKEN SPring-8 Center in Harima, Hyogo Prefecture, will talk about his work on using X-ray charge density to directly observe chemical interactions at the molecular level. Using data on electron density, Mr. Shih has obtained interesting results on chemical bonds and the atomic nature of transition metals, findings that can be applied to bio-molecules such as proteins. Dr. Tetsushi Hoshida, from the Laboratory for Cell Function Dynamics at RIKEN's Brain Science Institute and the Miyawaki Life Function Dynamics Project (ERATO) at the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), will discuss live imaging technologies with fluorescent proteins. Bio-imaging using fluorescent proteins is a topic of great interest in the bioscience community, since it enables the direct visualization of biological functions. Dr. Hoshida's team is developing new fluorescent probes and bioscience methods to discover unknown functions and potential in living things. Research on fluorescent proteins won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2008. Dr. Kyoko Masuda of the RIKEN Center for Allergy and Immunology and immune iPS Project (CREST) at JST, will give a talk on her research into the therapeutic potential of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells derived from mature lymphocytes. This work points the way toward a new and potent weapon against cancer and other diseases. RIKEN will share a booth at the conference with the Japan Science and Technology Agency, which will have a meeting area for presentations. The booth will feature a presentation on the Omics Science Center, one of the primary life science centers at RIKEN's Yokohama Institute. 'Omics' is the comprehensive study of molecules in living organisms, including biological processes and physiological functions and structures, with an emphasis on genomics. The center's projects include the Life Science Accelerator, a system for rapidly decoding the network of molecular interactions in a cell, making it possible to comprehensively analyze a large amount of genome-wide data, as well as the Genome Network Project, which elucidates the network of molecular interactions among genes and phenotypes. Also noteworthy is the Functional RNA Research Project, which has found novel non-coding RNA in genetic networks and is uncovering its role in regulating the working of genes and proteins. The OSC was also the instigator of the FANTOM (Functional Annotation of Mouse cDNA) and FANTOM4 projects to annotate transcriptional regulatory networks in mammals including the humans. While the center's data has been described as the 'gold standard' of science, it doesn't exactly glitter. The OSC strives to illustrate and explain its work with computer graphic images and video and will present an example in its stereoscopic high-vision movies illustrating the process of transcription and translation in a living cell with unique mechanical motifs. While 3D stereoscopic content is gradually increasing in astronomy, there is also quite a lot of work being done in the life sciences. The booth will also include a presentation on the X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) currently being built at SPring-8. When complete, the XFEL will provide a new type of light source that will make a significant contribution to scientific technology with its ability to instantaneously observe atomic-scale events. The XFEL, scheduled to start up in 2010, is already generating excitement in the research community, as it promises radiation a billion times brighter than existing X-ray sources, with pulses 1,000 times shorter, allowing real-time observation of objects at atomic-level resolution. This will allow, for example, close observation of proteins that cannot currently be analyzed, as well as the structure of viruses. |
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| RIKEN, one of Japan's leading research institutes, conducts basic and applied experimental research in a wide range of science and technology fields including physics, chemistry, medical science, biology and engineering. Initially established as a private research foundation in Tokyo in 1917, RIKEN became an independent administrative institution in 2003. For more information, visit www.riken.jp | |
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