Hideki Aihara
Associate Professor
Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Biophysics
University of Minnesota
United States of America
Biography
Dr. Aihara received his PhD at the University of Tokyo in 2000. He is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota, and has a particular interest in various DNA rearrangement systems. His lab uses x-ray crystallography as the primary tool to determine three-dimensional structures of the protein machineries that catalyze DNA strand cutting and rejoining reactions. The structural information helps to address mechanistic questions, namely how particular DNA sequences are recognized to initiate a DNA rearrangement reaction, how separate pieces of DNA are brought together and arranged for coordinated chemical reactions, and how reaction directionality is regulated. Better understanding of these aspects of the DNA rearrangement processes may ultimately aid in the design of new antibiotics and anti-viral drugs as well as the development of a sequence-specific gene delivery tool for safer gene therapy.
Research Interest
DNA rearrangement systems relevant to human health including resolution of a concatenated DNA-replication intermediate into linear chromosomes in Borrelia burgdorferi, the Lyme disease spirochete and retroviral integration reaction in which the integrase protein e
Publications
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Shaban N.M., Shi K., Li M., Aihara H., Harris R.S. (2016) 1.92 angstrom zinc-free APOBEC3F catalytic domain crystal structure. J Mol Biol; 428 : 2307-2316
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Marchand C, Abdelmalak M, Kankanala J, Huang SY, Kiselev E, et al. (2016) Deazaflavin Inhibitors of Tyrosyl-DNA Phosphodiesterase 2 (TDP2) Specific for the Human Enzyme and Active against Cellular TDP2. ACS chemical biology; 11 : 1925-1933.
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Shi K, Carpenter MA, Banerjee S, Shaban NM, Kurahashi K, Salamango DJ, et al. (2017) Structural basis for targeted DNA cytosine deamination and mutagenesis by APOBEC3A and APOBEC3B. Nature structural & molecular biology; 24 : 131-139.
