Osamu Nureki completed his education and gained a doctor of Science at the University of Tokyo (Graduate School of Science). After receiving the doctorate, he worked one year in RIKEN as a post-doc, and then worked as the assistant professor and associated professor at the University of Tokyo for 8 years. In 2003, he became the full professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology, and continued the structural studies of translational apparatus, and also started the project of membrane protein. In 2008, he moved to The University of Tokyo (Institute of Medical Sciences), and mainly worked on membrane transporters and cancer research to design anti-cancer drugs. In 2010, he finally moved back to The University of Tokyo (Graduate School of Science). His group has three main research projects. 1. Membrane channels and transporters, 2. RNA silencing and CRISPR-Cas system, and 3. Chronic inflammation. Especially, his group has pioneered high-resolution crystallography of membrane proteins using lipidic cubic phase crystallization method and microfocus beam in SPring-8 synchrotron.

Molecular mechanism of CRISPR and structure-based development of genome editing tool towards medical applications

The CRISPR-associated endonuclease Cas9 can be targeted to specific genomic loci by single guide RNAs (sgRNAs). We have solved the crystal structures of Cas9, from 5 sources (984 a.a. to 1,629 a.a.), complexed with sgRNA and its target DNA at atomic resolutions. These high-resolution structures combined with functional analyses revealed the generality and diversity of molecular mechanism of RNA-guided DNA targeting by Cas9, and uncovered the distinct mechanisms of PAM recognition. On the basis of the structures, we succeeded in changing the specificity of PAM recognition, which paves the way for rational design of new, versatile genome-editing technologies.