The 25th In Silico Megabank Research Seminar will be held on Friday, March 15.
This Time, we will be welcoming Dr. Makalowski Wojciech Rafal, Univ. Muenster as our lecturer, and he will be speaking on “Natural history of vertebrate globins.”
・Date/Time: March 15(Fri.) 17:00‐18:30
・Venue: Conference Room 1 (2ndFloor), Tohoku Medical Megabank Organization http://www.megabank.tohoku.ac.jp/english/info/access.html
・Title: Natural history of vertebrate globins
・Lecturer: Prof. Wojciech Makalowski
(Institute of Bioinformatics, University of Muenster)
・Abstract: Globins are small heme proteins that bind various external ligands, such as oxygen or nitric oxide, and they are found in all kingdoms of life. Vertebrate genomes harbor seven different globin types, including prominent hemoglobin (Hb) and myoglobin (Mb). Tetrameric Hb is present in erythrocytes and transports oxygen via blood to the inner tissues. The monomeric, muscle-specific myoglobin, on the other hand, stores oxygen, enhances the oxygen diffusion to the muscle cells and detoxifies nitric oxide. Five recent additions to vertebrate globin repertoire are cytoglobin (Cygb), neuroglobin (Ngb), globin X (GbX), globin E (GbE) and globin Y (GbY). It has been suggested that the GbE and Mb genes, as well as the GbY and proto-Hb genes, are the paralogous products of tandem gene duplications that occurred early in the evolution of vertebrates. In contrast, Ngb and GbX derive from independent duplication events that occurred before the split of Deuterostomia and Protostomia. To date little is known regarding the functions of the novel globin proteins. I will focus on our recent evolutionary studies of Ngb and GbX in which we demonstrated ancestry of these two globins reaching dating back to origins of metazoans.
・Organizer: Yumi Yamaguchi, Masao Nagasaki