RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science Drug Discovery Seeds Development Unit

Unit Leader: Minoru Yoshida (D.Agr.)

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Research Summary

Our unit's mission is to contribute to academic drug discovery by establishing a platform comprising appropriate assay systems and instrumentation for conducting high-throughput screening using diverse natural products and target-oriented libraries, in collaboration with computational chemistry and medicinal chemistry. Furthermore, to explore novel drug targets and validate their feasibility, we aim to advance next-generation drug discovery technologies by introducing experimental automation, digital transformation (DX) in data management, clustering analysis based on similar-structure networks, and AI-driven screening technologies.

Main Research Fields

Biology

Related Research Fields

Chemistry
Informatics

Keywords

Chemical Biology
Epigenetics
Mode of Action
Transcriptional Regulation
Chemical Screening for Drug Discovery

Selected Publications

1. Hoshikawa, Y., Shirota, N., Tsugawa, H., Kimura, S., Matsuyama, A., Yashiroda, Y., Kakeya, H., Arita, M., Iizumi, R., Yoshida, M., Nishimura, S.:
"Formation of giant ER sheets by pentadecanoic acid causes lipotoxicity in fission yeast."
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci U. S. A. 122(22):e2422126122 (2025)
2. Schneider-Poetsch, T., Dang, Y., Iwasaki, W., Arata, M., Shichino, Y., Al Mourabit, A., Moriou, C., Romo, D., Liu, J.O., Ito, T., Iwasaki, S., Yoshida, M.:
"Girolline is a sequence context-selective modulator of eIF5A activity."
Nat. Commun. 16(1):223 (2025)
3. Noritsugu, K., Suzuki, T., Dodo, K., Ohgane, K., Ichikawa, Y., Koike, K., Morita, S., Umehara, T., Ogawa, K., Sodeoka, M., Dohmae, N., Yoshida, M., Ito, A.:
"Lysine long-chain fatty acylation regulates the TEAD transcription factor."
Cell Rep. 42(4), 112388 (2023)
4. Takase, S., Hiroyama, T., Shirai, F., Maemoto, Y., Nakata, A., Arata, M., Matsuoka, S., Sonoda, T., Niwa, H., Sato, S., Umehara, T., Shirouzu, M., Nishigaya, Y., Sumiya, T., Hashimoto, N., Namie, R., Usui, M., Ohishi, T., Ohba, S., Kawada, M., Hayashi, Y., Harada, H., Yamaguchi, T., Shinkai, Y., Nakamura, Y., Yoshida, M., Ito, A.:
"A specific G9a inhibitor unveils BGLT3 lncRNA as a universal mediator of chemically induced fetal globin gene expression."
Nat. Commun. 14, 23 (2023)
5. Sasaki, K., Suzuki, M., Sonoda, T., Schneider-Poetsch, T., Ito, A., Takagi, M., Fujishiro, S., Sohtome, Y., Dodo, K., Umehara, T., Aburatani, H., Shin-ya, K., Nakao, Y., Sodeoka, M., Yoshida, M.:
"Visualization of the dynamic interaction between nucleosomal histone H3K9 tri-methylation and HP1α chromodomain in living cells."
Cell Chem. Biol. 29(7), 1153-1161.e5. (2022)
6. Chhipi-Shrestha, J.K., Schneider-Poetsch, T., Suzuki, T., Mito, M., Khan, K., Dohmae, N., Iwasaki, S., Yoshida, M.:
"Splicing modulators elicit global translational repression by condensate-prone proteins translated from introns."
Cell Chem. Biol. 29(2), 259-275 (2022)
7. Yoshimoto, R., Chhipi-Shrestha, J.K., Schneider-Poetsch, T., Furuno, M., Burroughs, A.M., Noma, S., Suzuki, H., Hayashizaki, Y., Mayeda, A., Nakagawa, S., Kaida, D., Iwasaki, S., Yoshida, M.:
"Spliceostatin A interaction with SF3B1 limits U1 snRNP availability and causes premature cleavage and polyadenylation."
Cell Chem. Biol. 28(9), 1356-1365.e4. (2021)
8. Kobayashi, H., Hatakeyama, H., Nishimura, H., Yokota, M., Suzuki, S., Tomabechi, Y., Shirouzu, M., Osada, H., Mimaki, M., Goto, Y., Yoshida, M.:
"Chemical reversal of abnormalities in cells carrying mitochondrial DNA mutations."
Nat. Chem. Biol. 17(3), 335-343 (2021)
9. Schneider-Poetsch, T., Yoshida, M.:
"Along the central dogma-controlling gene expression with small molecules."
Annu. Rev. Biochem. 87, 391-420 (2018)
10. Piotrowski, J.S., Li, S.C., Deshpande, R., Simpkins, S.W., Nelson, J., Yashiroda, Y., Barber, J.M., Safizadeh, H., Wilson, E., Okada, H., Gebre, A.A., Kubo, K., Torres, N., Leblanc, M.B., Andrusiak, K., Okamoto, R., Yoshimura, M., van Leeuwen, J., Shirahige, K., Baryshnikova, A., Brown, G., Saito, T., Costanzo, M., Andrews, B., Ohya, Y., Osada, H., Yoshida, M., Myers, C.L., Boone, C.:
"Functional annotation of chemical libraries across diverse biological processes."
Nat. Chem. Biol. 13(9), 982-993 (2017)