Research undertaken at the Watanabe Laboratory

The Watanabe Laboratory, based at Kyoto University, uses induced pluripotent stem cells to study cell fate regulation. Its contributions to knowledge could help break new ground in the field of regenerative medicine and beyond.

Professor Akira Watanabe and his laboratory are building upon the foundations laid by Yamanaka. Based within the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CIRA) at Kyoto University, Japan, the Watanabe Laboratory uses iPS cells to study epigenesis and all of the potential that it affords.

One of the key avenues of investigation is on building a model of epigenesis using a series of single cell devices including the Fluidigm's C1 system, 10XGenomics's Chromium, Clontech's ICELL8 and Bio-Rad's ddSEQ and the Illumina's HiSeq2000 sequencer. These devices allow researchers to prepare single cell templates for mRNA sequencing, DNA sequencing, epigenetics or miRNA expression. Importantly, the technology enables users to survey cell diversity, identify rare cell types and characterise cellular functions, all on the same single cell biology platform. iPS cells undergo a series of stages when they are differentiating into their final cell state. Current understanding suggests that each stage depends on different factors and, until now, identifying the different factors has proved extremely difficult. With that in mind, Watanabe and his team have worked to develop single cell analysis tools to enable them to identify the factors.