The 44th In Silico Megabank Research Seminar will be held on Friday, January 17.

This Time, we will be welcoming Dr. Yoshihito Niimura, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo as our lecturer, and he will be speaking on “Evolution of Olfactory Receptor Gene of Vertebrates -Genome Changing in Response to the Environment-”.

・Date/Time: January 17(Fri.) 16:00‐17:30
・Venue:  Middle Conference Room (2nd Floor), Building #1, Tohoku University School of Medicine
・Title: Evolution of Olfactory Receptor Gene of Vertebrates -Genome Changing in Response to the Environment –
・Lecturer: Yoshihito Niimura（Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo）

＊This lecture is transferable as a class in the medical research-related lecture course.

・Abstract: There are various odor molecules in our environment, and they are detected by olfactory receptors (OR). OR genes form the largest gene family in mammals. There are approximately 400 in humans, and more than 1,000 in mouse and rats. OR gene family is characterized by huge variance in the number of genes depending on the species and extremely huge numbers of duplications and deletions occur in the process of evolution. In addition, evolution dynamics differ by OR gene; it was found that there exist OR genes producing a variety of progeny and, at the same time, that there are only few genes that are stable in the process of evolution without duplications and deletions. In this seminar, we will focus on the evolution of olfactory receptor gene of vertebrates and take you to the journey, a sense of smell.

・Organizer : Yoko Kuroki, Masao Nagasaki