Five new laboratories join RIKEN BDR

On April 1, the RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research (BDR) welcomed the addition of five new laboratories to its community.

Two new team leaders, Dr. Dan Ohtan Wang and Dr. Fumiaki Obata, have launched the Laboratory for Neuroepitranscriptomics and the Laboratory for Nutritional Biology, respectively, and are both based at the Kobe Campus. Wang’s laboratory will be carrying out studies investigating the roles of a novel RNA neuroepigenetic mechanism in the central nervous system in synaptic function. Obata will be examining the functions of different nutrients and gut microbiota that are modified in response to various dietary conditions.

The other three laboratories—the Laboratory for Advanced NMR Application and Development led by Dr. Yoshitaka Ishii, the Laboratory for NMR Engineering and Structural Science led by Dr. Toshio Yamazaki, and the Laboratory for Functional Ultra-High-Field Magnet Technology led by Yoshinori Yanagisawa—moved from the RIKEN SPring-8 Center (RSC) to become part of RIKEN BDR. These three laboratories are based at the Yokohama Campus where the renowned NMR facility is located. Together these three NMR-associated laboratories will help to strengthen BDR’s research particularly in areas of structural biology.

With the addition of these five laboratories, BDR is now home to a total of 71 laboratories that are working to fulfill the Center’s mission to promote research for understanding the biological phenomena taking place inside living systems from molecular and cellular scales to tissue, organ, and body scales, throughout the organismal lifecycle.