GO TOP

Field

Molecular and Chemical Life Science :
Multilevel Biomolecular Structure and Dynamics

Research

Professor NANGO Eriko
Campus Katahira campus
Laboratory Dynamic structural biology
Tel +81-22-317-5345
E-mail eriko.nango.c4@tohoku.ac.jp
Website https://www2.tagen.tohoku.ac.jp/lab/nango/html/
Web of Science
Google Scholar
 
 
How is protein function achieved? It seems a simple question, but revealing the mechanism of protein functions has been challenging since observation of dynamics in nanometer-sized proteins at the atomic level was difficult. I aim to elucidate the mechanism of proteins at the atomic level and lead to new molecular designs.
Career
Eriko Nango studied natural product chemistry and X-ray crystallography at Tokyo Institute of Technology (TIT). After completing Ph.D. program without dissertation in Chemistry (2004), she became an assistant professor at the department of chemistry at TIT. She obtained her Ph.D. in chemistry in 2007 and moved to RIKEN to a postdoc after resigning an assistant professor at TIT for family matters in 2010. Later, she moved to the group of Professor So Iwata to work on methodology of protein determination using X-ray free electron lasers at SACLA in 2013. In 2020, She was promoted to a Professor at Tohoku University. 
Selected Publications
X-ray Free Electron Lasers:  A Revolution in Structural Biology, Springer
 
Activities in Academic Societies
Biophysical Society of Japan
Chemical Society of Japan
Crystallographic Society of Japan
Protein Science Society of Japan
Teaching
Advanced Molecular and Chemical Life Sciences III (Multilevel biomolecular structure and dynamics) 
General Molecular and Chemical Life Sciences
 

Recent Activities

(Visualizing the reaction of photoswitchable fluorescent proteins)
Photoswitchable fluorescent proteins are fluorescent proteins that switch their fluorescence on and off when exposed to specific light. Fluorescent proteins have a chromophore that accepts light, and the on/off fluorescence switching occurs with the chromophore's structural change. However, because the chromophore rapidly changes its structure upon light illumination, it was challenging to capture the movement of the chromophore, and the details of the switching mechanism remained unclear.
We succeeded in observing the movement of atoms in the photoswitchable fluorescent protein rsEGFP2 in extremely short times ranging from 300 femtoseconds (a femtosecond is one thousand trillionths of a second) to microseconds (a microsecond is one-millionth of a second) using X-ray free electron lasers and found that the molecular structure of the chromophore changes in a twisting manner.
https://www.tohoku.ac.jp/japanese/2023/07/press20230721-02-subpico.html
 

For others, please see below.
(Molecular movies of the structural changes of enzymes by heating)
https://www.tohoku.ac.jp/japanese/2023/09/press20230919-02-protein.html

(Ultrafast molecular movies of proteins involved in vision)
https://www.tohoku.ac.jp/japanese/2023/03/press20230323-01-vision.html
 

Message to Students

The distinctive feature of our laboratory is that we aim to elucidate protein functions by working both experimentally and computationally. The research fields range from molecular biology and biochemistry to crystallography and computational science, making our research interdisciplinary. If you are interested, please visit our laboratory.