We have opened the following preprint on bioRxiv. This is joint research with Professor Numata of Kyushu University and Professor Yusuke Azuma of Jagiellonian University in Poland. H. Li, Ł. Koziej, O. Kikko, K. Ishihara, T. Kagawa, K. Tajima, H. Shigematsu, C. Gerle, T. Matsuura, T. Numata, Y. Azuma, N. Terasaka†. Polymorphic Structures of an Artificial Nucleocapsid Evolved from a Circularly Permuted Bacterial Protein Cage. bioRxiv (2026) Molecular self-assembly provides a

Mr. Stephen Coffey (Ph.D. course) from Life Science Techonology course, have joined our group! (co-supervised by Prof. Matsuura)

A paper co-authored by Dr. Furubayashi and Professor Hiroyuki Noji of the Graduate School of Engineering, the University of Tokyo, has been published in the journal ACS Synthetic Biology. T. Furubayashi, N. Terasaka , K. Tajima , H. Noji. Boosted cell-free gene expression for robust signal readout from a single-copy DNA template in microdroplets. ACS Synth. Biol. (2026) Cell-free gene expression in microcompartments constitutes a chassis for biotechnology and synthetic biolog

A paper regarding on N-terminal incorporation of ncAA has been published in ACS Synthetic Biology! H. Furukawa, Y. Okamoto, N. Terasaka†. Artificial initiation codons and engineered initiator tRNAs enable N-terminal noncanonical amino acid incorporation in intact cell-free translation systems. ACS Synth. Biol. (2026) Noncanonical amino acid (ncAA) incorporation at the protein N-terminus enables defined protein functionalization. However, initiation-based ncAA incorporation sy

Dr. Masahiro Noji, a postdoctoral researcher, received the Young Researcher Award at the 26th Annual Meeting of the Protein Science Society of Japan, held in Tottori Prefecture from June 17th to 19th, 2026! https://www.elsi.jp/news_events/news/2026/masahiro-noji_pssj_award/

Mr. Shohei Ito (3rd year doctoral student), who is collaborating with Associate Professor Fujishima of ELSI, received the Poster Prize at DROPLET2026, which was held on June 4th and 5th, 2026. Mr. Ito received the award for his poster presentation titled "Detection of Acetyl-CoA Carboxylate Activity Using a Reconstituted Cell-Free Protein Synthesis System and Tiny Droplets." https://www.elsi.jp/en/news_events/news/2026/shoei-ito_droplet_award/

A paper regarding on in vitro reconstitution of split nucleocapsids has been published in ACS Synthetic Biology! K. Tajima, Y. Sakai, N. Terasaka†. Cargo-directed assembly of nonviral nucleocapsid with controlled size. ACS Synth. Biol. 15(3) 1178–1186 (2026) Precise packaging of diverse cargo within self-assembling protein cages of defined size and shape is essential for many biotechnological applications, yet cellular expression offers limited control over loading. Here, we

A preprint has been posted on bioRxiv. This is a collaborative research project with Associate Professor Yasunori Okamoto in The Exploratory Research Center on Life and Living Systems (ExCELLS), National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS). H. Furukawa, Y. Okamoto, N. Terasaka*. Artificial initiation codons and engineered initiator tRNAs enable N-terminal noncanonical amino acid incorporation in intact cell-free translation systems. bioRxiv (2026) Noncanonical amino acid (

A paper regarding on artificial split nucleocapsids has been published in PNAS! M. D. Levasseur*, N. Terasaka*, A. Steinauer, S. Tetter, S, Pfister, B. H. Meier, D. Hilvert. An engineered closed-shell, two-component, 480-subunit nucleocapsid. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA. 123(22), e2530090123 (2026) https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2530090123 Natural protein shells such as viral capsids and bacterial microcompartments have inspired efforts to design synthetic compartments t

The following two preprints have been opened on bioRxiv. They are collaborative research projects with Dr. Taro Furubayashi, a researcher at the Graduate School of Engineering, University of Tokyo. Boosted cell-free gene expression for robust signal readout from a single-copy DNA template in microdroplets https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.02.22.707295v1 Efficient cell-free evolution of RNA polymerases by droplet microfluidics https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.648

The following two preprints have been posted on bioRxiv. An engineered closed-shell, two-component, 480-subunit nucleocapsid https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.22.683813v1 Cargo-directed assembly of nonviral nucleocapsid with controlled size https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.11.06.684264v1

A paper regarding on artificial nucleocapsids for RNA delivery has been published in Angewandte Chemie . https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ange.202519027?af=R In this paper, we report engineering and directed evolution of a neo-nucleocapsid enabling receptor-specific RNA delivery. We applied the DogTag/DogCatcher protein ligation system to an artificial nucleocapsid and conducted directed evolution to obtain nucleocapsid displaying proteins. To create designer neo

Dr. Masahiro Noji has joined our lab.

Dr. Haruyuki Furukawa has joined our lab as a postdoctoral researcher!

First-year doctoral student Luo Zhengyang has been selected for Science Tokyo Next-Generation Frontrunner Cultivation Program for...

Mr. Luo Zhengyang (Ph.D. course) and Mr. Cao Wenke (Ms. course) from Life Science Techonology course, have joined our group!...

First-year doctoral student Li Hualin has been selected for Tokyo Tech's Next-Generation Frontrunner Cultivation Program for Integrated...

Dr. Kenya Tajima has been appointed as a JSPS Postdoctoral Research Fellow.

Ms. Sakura Shimizu has joined the lab as a technical support staff member.

A co-author paper has been published in Nucleic Acids Reserach. In this paper, we created a ribozyme that recognizes tRNA and catalyzes...