Background
Prof. Shinkai is a leading researcher within the field of epigenetics. He has made several fundamental discoveries, particularly on lysine methylation of histone proteins. More recently also on protein histidine methylation. Prof. Shinkai heads the Cellular Memory Laboratory at RIKEN, Japan.
Shinkai's group has pioneered the use of an analogue of S-adenosylmethionine, the methyl donor for cellular methyltransferases and click chemistry to identify the substrates of novel lysine and histidine methyltransferases. In his lecture, Prof. Shinkai will focus on his recent work on protein histidine methylation.
It was first reported more than 50 years ago that histidine residues in proteins are subject to methylation. Only recently the functional significance is better understood. The Shinkai group has played a key role by the identification of the responsible methyltransferases.
Prof. Shinkai's list of publications
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