A group of scientists from RIKEN presented their research at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) that was held in Chicago from February 12 to16.
In keeping with the theme of the meeting this year, ‘Our Planet and Its Life: Origins and Futures’, the RIKEN group that made presentations on their work included researchers doing cutting-edge work on environmental and life science-related topics.
Misao Itouga of RIKEN’s Plant Science Center in Yokohama presented his team’s findings on using moss to remove heavy metal contaminants from water.
Tetsushi Hoshida of RIKEN’s Brain Science Institute and the Japan Science and Technology Agency Miyawaki Life Function Dynamics Project (part of the Exploratory Research for Advanced Technology (ERATO) program), discussed live imaging technologies with novel fluorescent proteins.
Kyoko Masuda of the RIKEN Center for Allergy and Immunology’s Immune iPS Project, part of JST’s CREST (Core Research for Evolutional Science and Technology) program, gave a talk on her research into the therapeutic potential of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells derived from mature lymphocytes.
Che-Hsiu Shih of the RIKEN SPring-8 Center in Harima talked about his work using X-ray charge density to directly observe chemical interactions at the molecular level, which can be applied to biomolecules such as proteins. A Taiwanese doctoral candidate who is conducting research as a RIKEN International Program Associate, he also talked about his life at RIKEN to university undergrads and post-doc students who are interested in working in Japan.
RIKEN shared a booth, which had a meeting area for presentations, at the conference with JST. The booth featured a presentation on the Omics Science Center, one of the primary life science centers at RIKEN’s Yokohama Institute. The OSC presented an example of its stereoscopic high-vision movies illustrating the process of transcription and translation in a living cell with unique mechanical motifs. The booth also included a presentation on the X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) currently being built at SPring-8.
The exhibition floor was filled with booths from almost 100 research institutes and universities. More than 300 people, including young researchers, high school students and teachers, business persons and journalists, visited the RIKEN/JST booth and enjoyed communicating with RIKEN’s researchers.
