Recent advances in biotechnologies have successfully accumulated a series
of the “genome” information, which have been collectively known as the
blueprints of living organisms. According to the information,
for example, the human genome consists of 30-billion pairs of nucleotide that
encode 26,800 genes/proteins, which are necessary for human beings during their
lifetime; however, how these proteins function in the activities of the human
lives is largely unknown. The systematic
identification and characterization of proteins and “proteome”, a coined word
to describe a set of proteins encoded by genome, is called “proteomics” and it is
now becoming one of the major interdisciplinary research areas of life science
in “post-genomic era”. The advent of
proteomics and the other new scientific fields of “omics” force us to change
the ways of understanding living things and of approaching their unsolved biological
problems. Proteomics is particularly a
rich source of biological information because proteins are involved in almost
all biological activities and are various in their properties, therefore we
believe it can contribute greatly to our understanding of biological systems. In this laboratory we are developing advanced
technologies for proteomics, mainly based on liquid chromatography and mass
spectrometry. In particular, our recent
studies focus on the development of the mass spectrometry-based analytical
platform for “ribonucleoproteomics”, a new “omics” research field to study the
functional networks of RNAs and proteins, and its application to biology. The final goal of our study is to understand
the mechanism of life with "words of molecules".. |