Glycan Recognition Team

Team Leader

Takashi Angata

  • D. Sci.
  • Takashi Angata
  • Brief resume
    1998
    Ph.D., Graduate School of Science, University of Tokyo
    1998
    Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California at San Diego, USA
    2003
    Research Scientist, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology
    2008
    Research Scientist (tenured), National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology
    2009
    Specially Appointed Associate Professor, Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka University
    2011
    Team Leader, Glycan Recognition Team, RIKEN (-current)

Outline

Glycan Recognition Team

Glycans cover the surface of all living cells, and their structures reflect the "metabolic status" of the cell in a sensitive manner. Glycosylation changes associated with such diseases as infectious diseases and various types of cancer are well documented. Our team studies how glycan-recognition proteins in our body recognize these aberrantly glycosylated cells, and how they contribute to repairing or removing these “sick” cells. In particular, our research is focused on the interactions between “sialic acids” (a group of sugars located at the outermost end of glycans) and “siglecs” (a group of glycan-recognition proteins mostly expressed on the innate immune cells).

Our team is supported by the Osaka University Global Center of Excellence (COE) Program “Frontier Biomedical Science Underlying Organelle Network Biology,” and is conducting the research in close collaboration with the participants of the Program and other teams of the Systems Glycobiology Research Group.

Recent Research Topic

Possible roles of activating Siglecs
Fig. 1: Possible roles of “activating Siglecs”

Selected Publications

  1. K. Yasui, et al. Detection of anti-Siglec-14 alloantibodies in blood components implicated in nonhaemolytic transfusion reactions, Br. J. Haematol. 2011, 153, 794.
  2. K. Nakajima, et al. Simultaneous determination of nucleotide sugars with ion-pair reversed-phase HPLC, Glycobiology 2010, 20, 865.
  3. M. Yamanaka, Y. Kato, T. Angata, H. Narimatsu, Deletion polymorphism of SIGLEC14 and its functional implications, Glycobiology 2009, 19, 841.
  4. T. Angata, Y. Tabuchi, K. Nakamura, M. Nakamura, Siglec-15: an immune system Siglec conserved throughout vertebrate evolution, Glycobiology 2007, 17, 838.
  5. T. Angata, T. Hayakawa, M. Yamanaka, A. Varki, M. Nakamura, Discovery of Siglec-14, a novel sialic acid receptor undergoing concerted evolution with Siglec-5 in primates, FASEB J. 2006, 20, 1964.

Core Members

Principal Investigator add delete
Takashi Angata Team Leader    
Staff Scientist add delete
Kazuki Nakajima ASI Research Scientist    
Rina Takamiya ASI Research Scientist    
Postdoctoral Fellow add delete
Student Trainee add delete
Technical Assistant add delete
Administrative Assistant add delete
Visiting Research Staff add delete
Other Staff add delete
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