Publications by authors named "Naohiro Kawamoto"

Article Synopsis
  • Ribosome profiling is a technique that helps study protein synthesis but faces issues like contamination and measuring ribosome numbers in transcripts.
  • The authors introduce "Ribo-FilterOut" to separate ribosome footprints from subunits and "Ribo-Calibration" to accurately measure ribosome levels using defined mRNA-ribosome complexes.
  • This new method allows for genome-wide analysis of ribosome allocation and translation rates across different conditions, such as heat shock and aging.
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Current gene silencing tools based on RNA interference (RNAi) or, more recently, clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)‒Cas13 systems have critical drawbacks, such as off-target effects (RNAi) or collateral mRNA cleavage (CRISPR‒Cas13). Thus, a more specific method of gene knockdown is needed. Here, we develop CRISPRδ, an approach for translational silencing, harnessing catalytically inactive Cas13 proteins (dCas13).

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A circadian clock is an essential system that drives the 24-h expression rhythms for adaptation to day-night cycles. The molecular mechanism of the circadian clock has been extensively studied in cyanobacteria harboring the KaiC-based timing system. Nevertheless, our understanding of the physiological significance of the cyanobacterial circadian clock is still limited.

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Circadian rhythms are based on biochemical oscillations generated by clock genes/proteins, which independently evolved in animals, fungi, plants, and cyanobacteria. Temperature compensation of the oscillation speed is a common feature of the circadian clocks, but the evolutionary-conserved mechanism has been unclear. Here, we show that Na/Ca exchanger (NCX) mediates cold-responsive Ca signaling important for the temperature-compensated oscillation in mammalian cells.

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Proteins KaiA, KaiB and KaiC constitute a biochemical circadian oscillator in the cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus. It has been reported kaiA inactivation completely abolishes circadian oscillations. However, we show here that kaiBC promoter activity exhibits a damped, low-amplitude oscillation with a period of approximately 24 h in kaiA-inactivated strains.

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