Eriko Takano is a professor of synthetic biology and a director of the Synthetic Biology Research Centre for Fine and Speciality Chemicals (SYNBIOCHEM) at the University of Manchester.[1][2] She develops antibiotics and other high-value chemicals using microbial synthetic biology tools.

Eriko Takano
Eriko Takano lectures for the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in 2015
Alma materKitasato University (BSc)
University of East Anglia (PhD)
Known forSynthetic Biology
Scientific career
InstitutionsUniversity of East Anglia
University of Manchester
University of Tübingen
University of Groningen
ThesisppGpp and antibiotic production in Streptomyces coelicolor A3(2) (1993)
Websitewww.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/eriko.takano.html

Early life and education

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Takano was born in Japan.[3] She studied pharmacy at Kitasato University and graduated in 1985.[3] After graduating she worked as a researcher in the Meiji Seika Kaisha Department of Genetics. She moved to the United Kingdom for her graduate studies, where she joined the John Innes Centre.[3] In 1994 she earned her PhD at the University of East Anglia,[4] and she was appointed a postdoctoral researcher in the molecular biology department.[3]

Research and career

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In 2002 Takano was appointed an assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology at University of Tübingen. Here she worked on the γ-Butyrolactone molecules that act to regulate antibiotic production and morphological differentiation in Streptomyces.[5] She was made a Rosalind Franklin Fellow at the University of Groningen in 2006 and promoted to associate professor in 2010.[3]

In 2012 Takano was made Professor of Synthetic Biology at the University of Manchester. She leads the biotechnology theme in the Faculty of Life Sciences. Her research considers synthetic biology for the production of antibiotics, as well as the development of software for bioinformatics that can design natural products.[3][6][7] Her software contributions includes antiSMASH[8] and MultiGeneBlast.[9] These can include the secondary biosynthetic pathways that have been identified from any genome sequence.[10] Genome sequencing offers new opportunities to find production pathways for antibiotics.[11] Takano is developing robotic systems to explore the potential biosynthetic pathways, testing thousands of new compounds every year.[11][12]

Takano is a director of the European Centre of Excellence Synthetic Biology Research Centre for Fine and Speciality Chemicals (SYNBIOCHEM).[13] In 2015 Vince Cable announced a £10 million investment into Synthetic Biology to the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, University of Manchester.[14]

Awards and honours

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Her awards and honours include;

Selected publications

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Her publications[1] include;

  • antiSMASH 3.0—a comprehensive resource for the genome mining of biosynthetic gene clusters[8]
  • Tanako, Eriko (2011). "antiSMASH: rapid identification, annotation and analysis of secondary metabolite biosynthesis gene clusters in bacterial and fungal genome sequences". Nucleic Acids Research. 39 (Web Server issue): W339–W346. doi:10.1093/nar/gkr466. PMC 3125804. PMID 21672958.
  • Tanako, Eriko (2013). "antiSMASH 2.0—a versatile platform for genome mining of secondary metabolite producers". Nucleic Acids Research. 41 (Web Server issue): W204–W212. doi:10.1093/nar/gkt449. PMC 3692088. PMID 23737449.

References

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  1. ^ a b Eriko Takano publications indexed by Google Scholar  
  2. ^ Eriko Takano publications from Europe PubMed Central
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i "Prof Eriko Takano PhD | The University of Manchester". www.research.manchester.ac.uk. Retrieved 2019-09-04.
  4. ^ Takano, Eriko (1993). ppGpp and antibiotic production in Streptomyces coelicolor A3(2) (PhD thesis). University of East Anglia. OCLC 557313992. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.359366.
  5. ^ Takano, Eriko (2006). "γ-Butyrolactones: Streptomyces signalling molecules regulating antibiotic production and differentiation". Current Opinion in Microbiology. 9 (3): 287–294. doi:10.1016/j.mib.2006.04.003. hdl:11370/1a6bd16d-2b68-4255-bb68-517489183d4c. ISSN 1369-5274. PMID 16675291.
  6. ^ "Synthetic Biology for the Development of New Antibiotics". iBiology. Retrieved 2019-09-04.
  7. ^ Breitling, Rainer; Takano, Eriko; Yan, Cunyu; Swainston, Neil; W. Rattray, Nicholas J.; J. Jervis, Adrian; Currin, Andrew; Carbonell, Pablo (2016). "Bioinformatics for the synthetic biology of natural products: integrating across the Design–Build–Test cycle". Natural Product Reports. 33 (8): 925–932. doi:10.1039/C6NP00018E. PMC 5063057. PMID 27185383.
  8. ^ a b Tanako, Eriko (2015). "antiSMASH 3.0—a comprehensive resource for the genome mining of biosynthetic gene clusters". Nucleic Acids Research. 43 (W1): W237–W243. doi:10.1093/nar/gkv437. PMC 4489286. PMID 25948579.
  9. ^ Medema, Marnix H.; Takano, Eriko; Breitling, Rainer (2013-02-14). "Detecting Sequence Homology at the Gene Cluster Level with MultiGeneBlast". Molecular Biology and Evolution. 30 (5): 1218–1223. doi:10.1093/molbev/mst025. ISSN 1537-1719. PMC 3670737. PMID 23412913.
  10. ^ Takano, Eriko; Roel Bovenberg; Breitling, Rainer; Medema, Marnix H. (2011). "Exploiting plug-and-play synthetic biology for drug discovery and production in microorganisms". Nature Reviews Microbiology. 9 (2): 131–137. doi:10.1038/nrmicro2478. ISSN 1740-1534. PMID 21189477. S2CID 28455490.
  11. ^ a b "How robots could solve the antibiotics production crisis". How robots could solve the antibiotics production crisis. Retrieved 2019-09-04.
  12. ^ "MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS: Could Mancunian robots save humanity from superbugs? | Research Explorer | The University of Manchester". www.research.manchester.ac.uk. Retrieved 2019-09-04.
  13. ^ "SYNBIOCHEM - About - Leadership". Retrieved 2019-09-04.
  14. ^ Vince Cable Announces £10m Investment At Manchester Uni, 29 January 2015, retrieved 2019-09-04