We are Medicinal
Enzyme Engineering
Laboratory.

Concept

Enzyme engineering and metabolic engineering can now enable the sustainable biosynthesis of virtually any desired chemical product. This synthetic biology research trend has exploded as a future hope to improve the production of various chemicals and materials. Engineering the microbial production of target compounds requires many steps including synthesis and editing of DNA, construction of host strains, selection of appropriate genes to build optimal metabolic pathways, analysis of metabolites, and scaling up production titers. Among these steps, the discovery and engineering of enzymes is one of the least standardized and automated processes. More importantly, the extension of currently known metabolic pathways to produce new types of valuable compounds completely depends upon the discovery or engineering of specialized enzyme functions. Therefore, the Medicinal Enzyme Engineering Laboratory is established to develop, systematize and apply computational enzyme engineering approaches for the production of medicinal compounds.

Latest News                                                                          

Noriyuki SHIOURA (B4),
NIRANNJHEENI ALAGAPPAN (B4),
and Satoshi YUZAWA (B4)
gave poster presentations at the
“18th Symposium on Biorelevant Chemistry”.

2024/09/12~14
@Tsukuba International Congress Center
2024/09/08~10
NIRANNJHEENI ALAGAPPAN gave an oral presentation at the “76th SBJ Annual Meeting”.
@ Tokyo Institute of Technology
2024/09/08
Noriyuki SHIOURA (B3),
NIRANNJHEENI ALAGAPPAN (B3),
and Satoshi YUZAWA (B3)
have joined our lab!
2023/10/03
2023/04/01
Mrs. Yuko Murakami has joined the lab
as our administrative assistant!
An oral presentation, Machine learning discovery of specialized enzymes for the biosynthesis of aromatic plantcompounds, was given at the “48th Annual Meeting of the Pesticide Society of Japan”.
2023/03/09
See more
Vavricka Jr. Christopher John
Ph.D., Biochemistry

Tenure-Track Associate Professor
Department of Biotechnology and Life Science
Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Department of Biochemistry, PhD - Biochemistry; B.S. - Psychology