Department of Biological Systems
Research Areas
| The RIKEN BioResource Center (BRC) has been operating with determination to become a central core facility of biological resources in Japan serving for Japanese and international scientific community, since its establishment in 2001. With three principles of the RIKEN BRC, "Trust", "Sustainability", and "Leadership", Department of Biological Systems has been focusing on bioresources that are essential for advancement of life science research, such as the mouse, the most widely experimental animal, Arabidopsis, an experimental model plant, cultured cell lines of human and animals, genetic materials, microorganisms and information associated with these resources. Our objective is to promote science by making these important biological resources of highest quality available to scientific community. Development of novel bioresources and new technologies associated with these bioresources is another important task of the Department. The Department also gives several training courses for handling bioresources to promote efficient use of them. The Department has been working also on the ethical issues associated with human materials, intellectual property rights of bioresources and international relationship. In Department of Biological Systems, there are now six Divisions; Experimental Animal, Experimental Plant, Cell Engineering, Gene Engineering, Microbe (Japan Collection of Microorganisms) and Bioresource Information. Four of these Division, Experimental Animal, Experimental Plant, Cell Engineering and Gene Engineering Divisions, have been selected as national core facilities for their respective resources and Microbe Division as an adjunct facility by the National Bioresource Project carried out by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan since 2002 fiscal year. |
 Chief Scientist Yuichi OBATA (Ph.D.)  |
List of Selected Publications
| (1) | Mise-Omata, S., Obata, Y., Iwase, S., Mise, N., and Doi, S. T.: "Transient strong reduction of PTEN expression by specific RNAi induces loss of adhesion of the cells" Biochem. Biophy. Res. Commun., 328, 1034-1042 (2005). |
| (2) | Ugai, H., Yamasaki, T., Hirose, M., Inabe, K., Kujime, Y., Terashima, M., Liu, B., Tang, H., Zhao, M., Murata, T., Kimura, M., Pan, J., Obata, Y., Hamada, H., and Yokoyama, K.: "Purification of infectious adenovirus in two hours by ultracentrifugation and tangential flow filtration" Biochem. Biophy. Res. Commun., 331, 1053-1060 (2005). |
| (3) | Tsujimura, K., Obata, Y., and Takahashi, T.: "Thymus-leukemia antigen (TL) as a major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class lb molecule and tumor-specific antigen" Cancer Sci. 95, 469-474 (2004). |
| (4) | Tsujimura, K., Obata, Y., Matsudaira, Y., Ozeki, S., Taguchi, O., Nishida, K., Okanami, Y., Akatsuka, Y., Kuzushima, K., and Takahashi, T.: "Immunity against mouse thymus-leukemia antigen (TL) protects against development of lymphomas induced by a chemical carcinogen, N-butyl-N-nitrosourea" Cancer Sci., 95, 914-919 (2004). |
| (5) | Lee, S.-Y., Obata, Y., Yoshida, M., Stockert, E., Williamson, B., Jungbluth, A.A., Chen, Y-T., Old, L.J., and Scanlan, M.J.: "Immunomic analysis of human sarcoma" Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 100, 2561-2656 (2003). |
| Experimental Animal Division |
| Experimental Plant Division |
| Cell Engineering Division |
| Gene Engineering Division |
| Microbe Division |
| Bioresource Information Division |
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