About the department

Aging Stress Response Research Project Team

Aging is closely related to abnormalities in adaptation to various environmental stresses such as DNA damage response, redox response to oxidative stress, inflammatory stress response to tissue damage, endoplasmic reticulum stress response, mitochondrial stress response, etc. In order to understand the aging mechanism, it is extremely important to elucidate changes of these various response mechanisms during aging process. It is also significant in aging research to understand how these aging stress response mechanisms protect or damage cells and tissues at the molecular level. The research project team especially focuses on mitochondria, which are the core organelles of energy metabolism and reactive oxygen species, and aims to elucidate the mechanism of mitochondrial stress response based on mitochondrial dysfunction. We are also studying the molecular mechanism that leads to signal transmission from mitochondria to the nucleus and epigenetics regulation during aging and age-related diseases.

Research Focus

Focusing on SOD2 (Mn-SOD), which plays a central role in redox regulation in mitochondria, we are investigating the pathophysiological significance of mitochondrial stress response in organ damage processes.
We are investigating the pathophysiological role of SOD1 (CuZn-SOD), which plays a central role in redox regulation in the cytoplasm, in the aging process of organ damage.
We are also investigating the molecular mechanism of improving organ damage by administering functional foods to model mice that exhibit organ aging.

Members

Project Leader	Takahiko Shimizu
Research Fellow	Shuichi Shibuya
Research Fellow	Kenji Watanabe
Research Assistant	Masahiro Kamijyo
Research Assistant	Rina Yamamoto
Visiting Researcher	Akira Shimamoto
	Hidetoshi Nojiri
	Sunao Takeshita
	Kazuma Murakami