Download Cells must be grown to maintain their life. Individual organism is

FUNDING PROGRAM FOR NEXT GENERATION WORLD-LEADING RESEARCHERS
Project Title: Molecular mechanism for chromosome mis-segregation and its implication in carcinogenesis
Name: Tatsuo FUKAGAWA
Institution: National Institute of Genetics
1. Background of research
Cells must be grown to maintain their life. Individual organism is developed from a fertilized egg through
multiple cell divisions and an adult human is composed of approximately sixty trillion cells. To make
complete copy of cell during cell division, chromosome, which contains full genome information, is
transmitted into daughter cells. If chromosome was not correctly transmitted, cells would induce some
abnormalities including cancer formation.
2. Research objectives
Our goal is to understand mechanism how faithful chromosome segregation occur. Our knowledge leads to
understanding of mechanisms of cancer formation and contribute to development of “life innovation”.
3. Research characteristics (incl. originality and creativity)
We have been studying on chromosome segregation for more than 15 years. Based on our knowledge, we
will use modern genome technology and animal experiments in this project. As we are familiar with
techniques for cell and molecular biology, we would like to combine our techniques with modern technology.
This combination is unique.
4. Anticipated effects and future applications of research
As our study area is basic biology, it is hard to apply our knowledge to drug design soon. However, in future
our knowledge obtained from this project would be applied to design anti-cancer drug.
Object of this project：
Understanding of molecular basis of centromere
abnormalities and its implication of carcinogenesis
Analysis of centromere function in
cultured cells and in vitro
experiments
Control
Blue：Chromosomes
Red：Centromeres
Green：Spindle microtubules
Knockout of a
centromere protein
Creation of knockout (KO) mice
of centromere proteins and
characterization of
carcinogenesis in the KO mice