SAITOU Laboratory

Special issue on Yaponesian Gnome was published in Anthropological Science, journal published by Anthropological Society of Nippon. This issue includes these two papers.

(1) Preface to the special issue on the Yaponesia Genome Project
     Naruya SAITOU <website>
(2) Modern human DNA analyses with special reference to the inner dual-structure model of Yaponesian
     Timothy A Jinam, Yosuke Kawai, and Naruya Saitou <website>

A research highlight was published in NIG homepage about a paper published by Dr. Morteza M. Saber, Prof. Saitou, and others.
Title: Possible roles for DSCR4 (Down Syndrome Critical Region 4) gene
<website>

A paper was published by Dr. Morteza M. Saber, Prof. Saitou, and others in Genes and Genetic Systems, journal published by Genetics Society of Japan. Dr. Saber received Ph.D. degree from University of Tokyo Graduate School of Science under supervison of Prof. Saitou, and now he is a post-doctoral fellow in Montreal, Canada.
Title: Possible roles for the hominoid-specific DSCR4 gene in human cells
Authors: Morteza M. Saber, Marziyeh Karimiavargani, Nilmini Hettiarachchi, Michiaki Hamada, Yoshihiro Ito and Naruya Saitou
<Webiste of this paper> <PDF>

A research highlight was published in NIG homepage about a paper published by Assistant Prof. Jinam, Prof. Saitou, and others.
Title: Inner-dual structure of modern Yaponesians (people in Japanese Archipelago)
<website>

Prof. Saitou published one essay in online journal iDarwin. He is Editor-in-chief of this journal.
SAITOU Naruya (2021) “My Thoughts on Biological Evolution” by KIMURA (2020) – translation of KIMURA (1988) –. iDarwin, vol. 1, pp. 37-53. <PDF>

A paper written by Assistant Prof. Jinam, Prof. Saitou, and others was published in Journal of Human Genetics.
Title: Genome-wide SNP data of Izumo and Makurazaki populations support inner-dual structure model for origin of Yamato people.
Authors: Timothy Jinam, Yosuke Kawai, Yoichiro Kamatani, Shunro Sonoda, Kanro Makisumi, Hideya Sameshima, Katsushi Tokunaga and Naruya Saitou
<Website of this paper> <PDF>

Two papers written by Prof. Saitou and Assistant Prof. Jinam was published from Science Impact Ltd: “Sequencing ancient history” and “The origins of the Japanese” <PDF>

Prof. Saitou gave the online talk “Phylogenetic analysis of camel mitochondrial DNA sequences” at the Fifth International Agritechnological Summit held by Kazakh National Agrarian Research University located at Almaty, Kazkhstan. 

Asia Genome Tao Center (AGTC) was inaugurated as Saitou Naruya as Center Director. Two databases, GenomeSync maintained by Dr. Kirill Kryukov and dbSNS maintained by Dr. INOUE Jun, are linked from this AGTC page. We hope to devote to Genome Tao.

Google Scholar citation number of Saitou and Nei (1987) that proposed the neighbor-joining method exceeded 60,000.

Prof. Saitou Naruya published one article in new category "Introduction of published book" of iDarwin titled "Darwin: An Introduction – Prospects for Modern Evolutionary Studies –". Book about Darwin published by Prof. Saitou in 2011 in Japanese was introduced.

web site

Dr. Isaac Babarinde, who received Ph.D. from Saitou Laboratory, and Prof. Saitou Naruya published one paper in Genome Biology and Evolution:
The Dynamics, Causes, and Impacts of Mammalian Evolutionary Rates Revealed by the Analyses of Capybara Draft Genome Sequences

web site    YouTube

When this laboratory was established in National Institute of Genetics in 1964, laboratory head (Director, Division of Population Genetics) was Dr. KIMURA Motoo (1924-1994), who proposed the neutral theory of evolution in 1968. He published Iwanami Shinsho (booklet) “Thinking organismal evolution” (in Japanese) from Iwanami Shoten, Tokyo in 1988. This book is now translated into English by National Institute of Genetics Professor emeritus TATENO Yoshio and University of Tokyo Faculty of Science Professor emeritus AOKI Ken-ichi and was published from Springer Evolutionary Studies Series (Series Editor: SAITOU Naruya) as “My thoughts on biological evolution”. National Institute of Genetics Professor emeritus OHTA Tomoko wrote preface of this book. Our Population Genetics Laboratory is honored on publication of this book.
<Springer website> <Amazon website>

Paper on estimation of one-humped camel history based on genome analysis was published in Communications Biology (Prof. Saitou coauthored this paper): Web site

Dr. Kirill Kryukov joined Saitou Lab from Tokai University.

Dr. Inoue Jun moved to Genetic Research Section, Center for Earth Surface System Dynamics, Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, University of Tokyo.

Professor Saitou Naruya's laboratory name and Department name were changed according to organizational change of National Institute of Genetics.

Old: Division of Population Genetics, Department of Population Genetics
New: Population Genetics Laboratory, Department of Genomics and Evolutionary Biology

Professor SAITOU became head of Department of Genomics and Evolutionary Biology.

Dr. Suzuki Rumiko joined Saitou Lab from OITA University.

Dr. Kairat Dossybayev and Dr. Gulnur Zhunussova  joined Saitou Lab as post-doc fellow. They are both from Kazakhstan.

Dr. Inoue Jun joined Saitou Lab from OIST.

Ms Alba Bossoms Mesa, MS course student  joined Saitou Lab as visiting student. She is from Spain.

We will have special symposium to celebrate over 50,000 Google Scholar citations of Saitou & Nei's (1987) neighbor-joining method paper at National Institute of Genetics. Twenty researchers will present their studies.

Prof. Saitou will give an invited talk "Genome diversity is central to natural history studies"at "AsiaEvo Conference" in Sheraton Dameisha Resort, Shenzhen, China.

Prof. Saitou will give an invited talk "Swift neighbor-joining method for massive genome sequence data."at "Schull Institute Annual Conference and Scholars Program" in Center for Science and Health Professions Building, University of St. Thomas, Houston, USA.

Prof. Saitou gave an invited talk "First Sundaland People and their relationship with Denisovan and East Asian."at "The Landscape of Genetic Variants in Asian Founder Populations - from Near to Far East" in Kochi, Kerala, India.

Prof. Saitou gave an invited talk "Distance Matrix Methods for Reconstruction of Population History."at " Mahalanobis D²  and Later Developments in Understanding Population Relationships & Structure" in Kolkata, India.

Dr. Masatoshi Matsunam & Prof. Saitou's paper was published in Data in Brief (advance online). Go to Journal website.

Prof. Saitou gave an invited talk "Emergence of conserved noncoding sequences in primate genomes." at "Evolution in the time of genome architecture (EMBO Workshop)" in Naples, Italy.

Dr. Timothy A. Jinam's paper  was  published in Genome Biology and Evolution. Go to Journal website 

Prof. Saitou gave an invited talk "Characteristics of evolutionarily conserved noncoding regions in vertebrate genomes." at "SMBE2017 (Annual Meeting of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution 2017) " in Austin, USA.

"The 15th Korea-Japan-China Bioinformatics Symposium" was held in Seoul, Korea.

Prof. Saitou gave an invited talk "Genomic history of modern humans in East Eurasia".

Saber and Saitou's paper  was  published in Genome Biology and Evolution. Go to Journal website 

NIG International Symposium Genome Evolution at Mishima was held in NIG.

 “Human evolution in Eurasia elucidated through genetics, archeology, and linguistics” was held in NIG.

We determined partial nuclear genome DNA sequences of Jomon people for the first time, and paper was published in Journal of Human Genetics. *PDF*

Prof. Saitou gave an invited talk "Evolutionarily conserved noncoding sequence in eukaryotes." at The 14th CJK Bioinformatics Training Course & Symposium in China.

Saber et al.’s paper  was  published in Genome Biology and Evolution. Go to Journal website 

Kimura Motoo Award Ceremony and Symposium was held in Tokyo. 

Prof. Saitou and Dr. Jinam gave invited talks at The 13th International Congress of Human Genetics in Kyoto.  

Springer recently started "Evolutionary Studies" series, and Prof. Saitou is editor of this series.

Germany & Japan Workshop on Evolutionary Genomics was held at National Institute of Genetics.

Mr BABARINDE Isaac Adeyemi and Ms HETTIARACHCHI Nilmini Nadeeka received Ph.D. from Department of Genetics, SOKENDAI.

Prof. Saitou gave an invited talk "Characteristics of evolutionarily conserved noncoding regions in mammalian genomes" at Shanghai Center for Bioinformation Technology in China.

Prof. Saitou gave an invited talk "First people who reached Sundaland during ice age" at CAS-MPG Partner Institute for Computational Biology (PICB) in China.

Prof. Saitou gave an invited talk "Big eukaryote genomes contain many regions for gene expression control" at P.A.S. Workshop "Big Data and Science: Relevance of Computational Sciences for Data Collection in Vatican.

Five people（TIMOTHY Adrian Jinam, HETTIARACHCHI Nilmini Nadeeka, BABARINDE Isaac Adeyemi, Mahmoudi Saber MORTEZA, Shayire SHOKAT）attended 17th Annual Meeting of Society of Evolutionary Studies  in Japan.

NIG and OIST held a “Evolutionary Bioinformatics” symposium. For details, please see Symposium Home Page　Home Page in Korea

Five people (Prof. Saitou,Timothy Jinam,Nilmini Hettiarachchi,Isaac Babarinde,Mahmoudi Saber MORTEZA)  attended SMBE2015 Vienna meeting.

Prof. Saitou gave an invited talk "Inferring possible contacts between Denisovan and some ancestors of modern East Eurasians." at RNMH2014 in Hokkaido.

Prof. Saitou gave an invited talk "Characteristics of evolutionarily conserved noncoding regions in eukaryote genomes." at ISEGB 2014 (International Symposium on Evolutionary Genomics and Bioinformatics 2014) in Tainan.

Prof. Saitou gave an invited talk "Introduction to evolutionary genomics." at Otto Warburg International Summer School and Research Symposium on Comparative and Evolutionary Genomics [PICB] in Shanghai.

Prof. Saitou gave an invited talk "Characteristics of evolutionarily conserved protein noncoding regions in eukaryote genomes." at Otto Warburg International Summer School and Research Symposium on Comparative and Evolutionary Genomics [PICB] in Shanghai.

Prof. Saitou gave an invited talk "Genomic DNA analyses of modern and ancient people on Japanese Archipelago." at Migrations and Transfers in Prehistory: Asian and Oceanic Ethnolinguistic Phylogeography in Bern.

Prof. Saitou gave an invited talk "The history behind hominization, hominids' evolution, tissue differentiation and intelligence." at 2nd ISSOL-the International Astrobiology Society and Bioastronomy ( IAU Commission 51) Joint International Conference (Origins 2014) in Nara.

Prof. Saitou gave an invited talk "Introduction to Evolutionary Genomics" at The 12th Korea-Japan-China Bioinformatics Training Course 2014 in Korea.

Prof. Saitou gave an invited talk "From DNA to Myth: Deciphering history of Japonesian based on genetic data and possible connection with Japanese myths" at IUAES 2014 with JASCA in Chiba.

Prof. Saitou gave an invited talk "Genome history of Japonesian" at Symposium on "Dispersion of People, Crops, and Language: Focusing on Millets in Asia" in National Institute for the Humanities in Tokyo.

Prof. Saitou gave an invited talk "Neutral Mutations and Purifying Selection Dominate Genome Evolution"at SMBE Satellite Meeting/NIG International Symposium:THE CAUSES OF GENOME EVOLUTION in Mishima.

Prof. Saitou gave an invited talk "Genomic history of East Eurasian human populations based on modern and ancient DNA data" at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

Prof. Saitou just published "Introduction to Evolutionary Genomics" from Springer.

SOKENDAI Symposium -Modern Human Diversity on Genes and Culture
- with special reference to Asia and Oceania -was held at Graduate University for Advanced Studies.

Prof. Saitou gave an invited talk at The 20th Congress of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association held in Cambodia.

Ms. Xiayire Xiaokaiti from China joined Saitou Lab as special student of Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI).

Workshop "Molecular Evolution at All Fields of Biology" was held at National Institute of Genetics.

Prof. Saitou gave an invited talk at the 3rd Annual Next Generation Sequencing Asia Congress 2013 held in Singapore. 

Four people (Prof. Saitou, Dr. Kryukov, Mr. Kanzawa, and Mr. Babarinde)  attended SMBE2013 Chicago meeting.

Mr. Mahmoudi Saber MORTEZA from Iran joined Saitou Lab as special student of Univ. Tokyo Graduate School of Science with MEXT scholarship.

Dr. Matsunami Masatoshi, who received Ph.D. from Department of Genetics of SOKENDAI in March 2012, became post-doctoral fellow at Hokkaido University.

Dr. Timothy Jinam became post-doctoral fellow at Inoue Lab of NIG.

Mr. Timothy Jinam of Saitou Lab received Ph.D. from Department of Genetics of SOKENDAI.

Dr. Takahashi Mahoko became post-doctoral fellow at Sidow Lab of Stanford University, U.S.A.

Dr. Suzuki Rumiko became post-doctoral fellow at Yamaoka Lab of Oita University School of Medicine.

Ms Takahashi Mahoko of Saitou Lab received Ph.D. from Department of Genetics of SOKENDAI.

Ms Suzuki Rumiko of Saitou Lab received Ph.D. from Department of Genetics of SOKENDAI.

Dr. Ishibashi Minaka became post-doctoral fellow at Becker Lab of Sydney Medical School, University of Sydney, Australia. 

Ms Masuyama Waka and Ms Ishibashi Minaka received Ph.D. from Department of Genetics of SOKENDAI.