Invited by the Key Laboratory of Urban Environment and Health of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Sijun Dong’s research group, Professor Yoshizumi Ishino from Kyushu University visited the Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences for communication from Nov. 11th to 15th and gave a lecture with the theme of “DNA-related enzymes from hyperthermophilic archaea are useful for developing new genetic engineering technologies”.
In his lecture, he told about the history of the findings and researches of DNA-related enzymes and the development of genetic engineering technologies. He also shared his research experience with the audience. Dr. Ishino has been devoting himself to both basic and practical research of genetic engineering. He had been working in the famous biotechnology engineering company TaKaRa Shuzo, Co., Ltd and had leading the research and development of series of TaKaRa PCR Kit products, which are now widely used nearly in all biological laboratories over the world. Dr. Ishino first discovered the DNA sequence of CRISPR early in 1987 and put a lot of effort into related studies. His innovative findings about CRISPR has established the basis of the new effective and stable genetic engineering technology known as CRISPR-Cas9. Then Dr. Ishino introduced his study on DNA replication, recombination and repair mechanism and some nucleases of practical value they found in hyperthermophilic archaea. Researchers present were very interested in this wonderful lecture and communicated with Dr. Ishino actively after the lecture. At last, Dr. Ishino gave the young scholars and graduate students some useful advice and encouraged them to believe in and stick to their new ideas and what they find in their work.
Expert Profile
Yoshizumi Ishino, professor at Kyushu University, is a famous Japanese molecular biologist and microbiologist. He is known for his innovative findings about the CRISPR-Cas systerms. His main research fields include genetic engineering, marine environmental genome analysis and monitoring of mrine eovironment by metagenomic analysis. He has got the international Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) Research Grant ($1,350,000, 2002-2005), the Japan Medical Research and Development Award (2017), the Japan Minister of Education, Science, and technology award (2017), the Japan Bioscience, Biotechnology and Agrochemistry Society Award (2018). He serves as professional member of Japan intellectual property higher magistracy committee, affiliated faculty in NASA Astrobiology Institute and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has been invited to give lectures in 35 international academic conferences in 13 different countries. He has 45 patents, and has published more than 210 papers in some influential international journals such as PNAS, Nucleic Acids Research and so on with h-index 42.
(Edited by Wenjia Lu; photoed by Peiqiang Zhao)
