Japanese

Members

Director, CBBD-OIL

Haruko TAKEYAMA (Waseda University)

AIST-Waseda University Computational Bio Big-Data Open Innovation Laboratory (CBBD-OIL) was launched in July 2016 as an industry-academic-government collaborative research base (Open Innovation Laboratory, aka OIL) in cooperation with a private university for the first time. We aim to deepen the understanding of the mechanisms of biological phenomena by combining the huge biological data and the experimental technologies Waseda University owns, and the bioinformatics techniques and the theoretical biology methods provided by AIST. By trying to reveal the systems behind cellular biology and living organisms, we focus on research and development of the advanced computational methods as follows:

  • Identification of disease onset mechanisms;
  • Discovering and producing new pharmaceutical resources using biological data, e.g. marine metagenomics data and microorganism data;
  • Contribution to highly-personalized medical care.

In current molecular biology research, life information as big data is produced daily on the basis of the significant development of analytical instruments. It goes without a saying that collaborative work and research by the life system researchers and the information system researchers are extremely important, but there are many cases where it does not work well.
This OIL is a place to bridge such a gap, by growing new human resources with wet-lab students studying information science, and dry-lab students and researchers understanding the needs of the wet-lab to develop new analytical tools.

Integration of information technology with the biological research around the world, is expected to be applied to a wide variety of industries such as pharmaceutical field, food field, chemical field, etc. By constructing the industry-academic-government network, CBBD-OIL is attempting to strengthen goal-oriented fundamental research which leads to “bridging” the gap between private enterprises and researchers. We also aim to carry on research and development in order to make our cutting-edge biological information analysis technology the global standard. Many young researchers are thus actively working on their research at this laboratory.

Deputy Director, CBBD-OIL

Sequence Analysis Algorithms Team

Sequence Analysis Algorithms Team is primarily engaged in research and development of basic information technology and algorithms for effectively and efficiently analyzing biological information such as genome, epigenome, and RNA. For example, in higher organisms such as humans, it is suggested that there are more noncoding RNAs (RNAs that function in vivo without being translated into proteins) than those encoding proteins, and it has become known that a part of it is related to serious diseases such as cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. However, since most functions of such noncoding RNA are unknown at this time, we are developing information technology to estimate these functions. In addition, we are also developing basic technologies of alignment to efficiently process read sequences that are produced in large quantities from next-generation sequencers, which have advanced remarkably in recent years. Through these research and developments, we aim to send out bioinformatics tools of "CBBD-OIL origin" that will be used for a long time.

Single-Cell Data Analysis Team

In recent years, the importance of biological big data and its effective utilization draw interest. For example, relationships with host physiology including health and disease are being elucidated from the comprehensive analysis of the gut microbiota. In addition, it has become possible to perform genome analysis and gene expression analysis at the single cell level thanks to advances in technology. Waseda University has abundant know-how on acquisition and analysis of metagenomic data from various environments such as human intestines and the ocean, thus making outstanding achievements in the development of new analytical technology such as single cell analysis and micro-dissection analysis.

Single-Cell Data Analysis Team of CDDB-OIL acquires diverse biological data by making full use of such advantages Waseda University possesses. Together with AIST’s information analysis technology and microbial function analysis specialists (Bioproduction Research Institute of AIST), our team aims to elucidate the mechanisms of various biological phenomena such as diseases and symbiosis, and to connect to the discovery of potential drug targets, development of advanced formulations, and so on.