Kotaro Fujii,

Dr. Fujii is an Assistant Professor of Molecular Genetics & Microbiology and Center for NeuroGenetics at the University of Florida College of Medicine. He obtained Ph.D. degrees in RNA biochemistry and molecular biology. He came to the United States as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University and complemented his experience with developmental biology as well as state-of-the-art genome-wide sequence analyses by applying his biochemical techniques to the developing mammalian embryo. The research vision of Dr. Fujii is to molecularly understand mammalian development and homeostasis by utilizing a variety of interdisciplinary approaches from cutting edge biochemistry to in vivo animal models.

Dr. Fujii’s research has been centered on delineating new regulatory mechanisms of gene regulation at the step of mRNA translation by the ribosome. Given that the building blocks of our bodies are proteins, maintaining homeostasis of the proteome is critical for our health. His work has elucidated the quality control mechanism of the functional protein synthesis (Fujii et al., 2009 and 2012) and the fidelity of protein production (Fujii et al., 2018). His research also revealed spatiotemporal regulation of mRNA translation in developing mouse embryos (Fujii et al., 2017) and translational regulation by the ribosome itself (Shi et al., 2017) as well as core translation initiation factor eIF3 complex (Fujii et al., 2021). Dr. Fujii’s research program will unravel new layers of spatiotemporal specificity and fidelity of protein synthesis, to further understand the impact of mRNA translation regulation in development and diseases, particularly those caused by protein aggregation such as neurodegenerative disorders.

0000-0002-6028-4776