Unraveling the Genetic Basis of Disease: A Journey Through Bioinformatics Methods, Japanese Society of Human Genetics, 11 Oct 2024 (in Japanese)

Single-cell analysis of hypertension, Japanese Society of Hypertension, 16 Sep 2023 (partial; in Japanese)

Analysis of Metabolic Dysfunction-associated Steatotic Liver Disease by Single-Cell and Spatial Transcriptomics, Baker Tuesday talk, 5 Sept 2023 (slides)

Clinical Implication of Smoking-Related Aryl-Hydrocarbon Receptor Repressor (AHRR) Hypomethylation in Japanese Adults, 87th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Japanese Circulation Society, 10 March 2023 (slides)

Single-nucleus ATAC-seq elucidates major modules of gene regulation in the development of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, Melbourne Integrative Genomics (MIG), 1 Nov 2022 (slides)

Single-nucleus ATAC-seq elucidates major modules of gene regulation in the development of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, OzSingleCell2022, 14 Sept 2022 (poster)

scPloidy: Infer ploidy of single cells (or nuclei) based on single-cell (or single-nucleus) ATAC-seq data, OzSingleCell2022, 14 Sept 2022 (poster)

Genetics of hypertension, Japanese Society of Hypertension, 16 Oct 2021 (in Japanese)

Statistical method for cell-type-specific epigenome-wide association study, JSE, 30 March 2021 (in Japanese)

Nonlinear ridge regression improves robustness of cell-type-specific differential expression analysis, JFSSA, 11 Sep 2020 (in Japanese)

Genome analysis of hypertension, Science Council of Japan, 17 Jan 2020 (in Japanese)

Genetics of hypertension, Japanese Society of Hypertension, 26 Oct 2019 (first half of talk; in Japanese)

Fields of research

• Genetic factors of disease susceptibility and drug reaction. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have successfully identified numerous loci associated with common traits in human, such as disease susceptibility and reaction to medicine. I performed GWAS for metabolic diseases, such as diabetes and hypertension, and also for the required dose of anticoagulant warfarin. As a statistical geneticist, I have devised statistical methods for designing efficient association studies.
• Comparative genomics. A major area of my research is comparative genomics of pathogens. Here, we compare genomes of multiple strains or species that differ in virulence or antibiotic resistance. The aim is to identify the genes responsible for the phenotypic difference and to analyze how such genes were acquired. I have determined and compared the genome sequences of Staphylococci, which are causative agents of bacterial infection in hospitals and in the community.
• Molecular evolution. I am also interested in general principles for explaining the difference of DNA sequences across all livings. One topic I studied is the codon frequency of genes, which is a feature universal to all lives. Condon frequency can be used to infer from a gene sequence the type of species it is derived from, and can be applied in studying molecular evolution.
• Brain science of language (future project). I want to understand the development and mechanism of language processing in our brain.

Publications & Softwares

CV

Department of Gene Diagnostics and Therapeutics, Research Institute, National Center for Global Health and Medicine 1-21-1 Toyama, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, 162-8655, JAPAN