Team Leader Ichiro Hiratani Awarded Hyogo Prefectural Science Prize

Dr. Ichiro Hiratani, team leader of RIKEN BDR’s Laboratory for Developmental Epigenetics, was named one of the recipients of the 2024 Hyogo Prefectural Science Prize. He received his award at a ceremony held at the Hyogo Prefecture Citizen’s Hall on December 19, 2024.

Hiratani was recognized for his contributions to the life sciences through his pioneering research on the development of Repli-chip technology for analyzing DNA replication genome-wide. Building upon this technology, he further developed scRepli-seq, a method that allows genome-wide analysis of DNA replication states at the single-cell and single-chromosome levels. These technologies have advanced our understanding of the regulation of DNA replication and three-dimensional organization of the genome in single cells.