Masashi Yanagisawa

Kim, S.J., Hotta-Hirashima, N., Asano, F., Kitazono, T., Iwasaki, K., Nakata, S., Komiya, H., Asama, N., Matsuoka, T., Fujiyama T., Ikkyu, A., Kakizaki, M., Kanno, S., Choi, J., Kumar, D., Tsukamoto, T., Mahmoud, A., Mizuno, S., Miyazaki, S., Tsuneoka, Y., Sugiyama, F., Takahashi, S., Hayashi, Y., Muratani, M., Liu, Q., Miyoshi, C., Yanagisawa, M*., Funato, H*. Kinase signalling in excitatory neurons regulates sleep quantity and depth. Nature 612: 512-518, 2022

Zhou, R., Wang, G., Li, Q., Meng, F., Liu, C., Gan, R., Ju, D., Liao, M., Xu, J., Sang, D., Gao, X., Zhou, S., Wu, K., Sun, Q., Guo, Y., Wu, C., Chen, Z., Chen, L., Shi, B., Wang, H., Wang, X., Li, H., Cai, T., Bin, L., Wang, F., Funato, H., Yanagisawa, M ., Zhang, E.E., Liu, Q*. A signaling pathway for transcriptional regulation of sleep amount in mice. Nature 612: 519-527, 2022

Kanako Iwasaki, Tomoyuki Fujiyama, Shinya Nakata, Minjeong Park, Chika Miyoshi, Noriko Hotta-Hirashima, Aya Ikkyu, Miyo Kakizaki, Fumihiro Sugiyama, Seiya Mizuno, Manabe Abe, Kenji Sakimura, Satoru Takahashi, Hiromasa Funato, Masashi Yanagisawa*. Induction of mutant Sik3 Sleepy allele in neurons in late infancy increases sleep need. Journal of Neuroscience, 41, 2733-2746, 2021

Zhiqiang Wang, Jing Ma, Chika Miyoshi, Yuxin Li, Makito Sato, Yukino Ogawa, Tingting Lou, Chengyuan Ma, Xue Gao, Chiyu Lee, Tomoyuki Fujiyama, Xiaojie Yang, Shuang Zhou, Noriko Hotta-Hirashima, Daniela Klewe-Nebenius, Aya Ikkyu, Miyo Kakizaki, Satomi Kanno, Liqin Cao, Satoru Takahashi, Junmin Peng, Yonghao Yu, Hiromasa Funato, Masashi Yanagisawa*, Qinghua Liu*. Quantitative phosphoproteomic analysis of the molecular substrates of sleep need. Nature, 558, 435-439, 2018

Hiromasa Funato*, Chika Miyoshi, Tomoyuki Fujiyama, Takeshi Kanda, Makito Sato, Zhiqiang Wang, Jing Ma, Shin Nakane, Jun Tomita, Aya Ikkyu, Miyo Kakizaki, Noriko Hotta-Hirashima, Satomi Kanno, Haruna Komiya, Fuyuki Asano, Takato Honda, Staci J. Kim, Kanako Harano, Hiroki Muramoto, Toshiya Yonezawa, Seiya Mizuno, Shinichi Miyazaki, Linzi Connor, Vivek Kumar, Ikuo Miura, Tomohiro Suzuki, Atsushi Watanabe, Manabu Abe, Fumihiro Sugiyama, Satoru Takahashi, Kenji Sakimura, Yu Hayashi, Qinghua Liu, Kazuhiko Kume, Shigeharu Wakana, Joseph S Takahashi, Masashi Yanagisawa*. Forward-genetics analysis of sleep in randomly mutagenized mice. Nature, 539, 378-383, 2016

Education/Academic background

In 1988, as a graduate student at University of Tsukuba, Yanagisawa discovered endothelin, a potent vasoconstrictor peptide from vascular endothelial cells, which sparked an intense research activity in the field. After moving to University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas in 1991 as a young principal investigator, he identified the endothelin-converting enzyme, a metalloprotease that generate the active, mature endothelin peptides. In 1996, he initiated a systematic search for endogenous ligands of “orphan” G protein-coupled receptors, which resulted in his 1998 discovery of orexin, a hypothalamic neuropeptide. He then discovered in 1999 that orexin deficiency causes the sleep disorder narcolepsy. This opened up a new avenue in sleep research, and led to a better understanding of sleep/wake switching mechanisms in the brain. Now, he pulls all his energy to solve the fundamental mechanism for sleep homeostasis which is still remains a mystery as a professor and a director in IIIS.