We are pleased to invite you to a lecture by Prof. Hitoshi Kurumizaka (Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, The University of Tokyo) on “The Nucleosome as a Regulatory Machine on Genome.”

Prof. Kurumizaka is a leading scientist in chromatin biology and epigenetic regulation. In his talk, he will present his research on the structural and mechanistic basis of nucleosomes and their role in regulating genome function.

Hitoshi Kurumizaka is a Professor at the Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, the University of Tokyo, Japan. After receiving his Ph.D. degree in 1995, he started his postdoctoral training at NIH in the USA, in the laboratory of Molecular Embryology (Alan Wolfe Lab), where he began chromatin research. In 1997, he joined RIKEN as a Research Scientist. He subsequently moved to Waseda University, where he served as Associate Professor and later as Professor of Molecular and Structural Biology. Since 2018, he has been Professor at the Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, The University of Tokyo. His research focuses on the structural basis of chromatin and epigenetic regulation in eukaryotic genomes. In 2020, he established an in-house cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) platform to advance high-resolution structural studies of chromatin and genome-associated protein complexes. Professor Kurumizaka has made significant contributions to the field of chromatin biology through structural and mechanistic studies of nucleosomes and genome-associated protein complexes. His work has been published in leading international journals and has substantially advanced our understanding of chromatin architecture and epigenetic regulation.

Selected publications

1. Tachiwana et al., Nature, 476, 232-235, 2011.

2. Kato et al., Science, 356, 205-208, 2017.

3. Machida et al., Mol Cell, 69, 385-397, 2018.

4. Kujirai et al., Science, 362, 595-598, 2018.

5. Ehara et al., Science, 363, 744-747, 2019.

6. Kujirai et al., Science, 370, 455-458, 2020.

7. Ehara et al., Science, 377, eabp9466 (1169), 2022.

8. Shioi et al., Nature, 628, 212-220, 2024.

9. Kujirai et al., Nature Struct Mol Biol, 32, 1183-1192, 2025.

10. Kujirai et al., Nature Commun, 16, 4724, 2025.

11. Matsumoto et al., Nature Commun, 16, 9709, 2025.

12. Kujirai et al., Science Adv, 12, eaed1952, 2026.

Host: Volker Dötsch, vdoetsch@em.uni-frankfurt.de