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Q-BIO Quantitative Biology Lab
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A lab that quantitatively investigates how cells process information and determine their fate.
AboutAbout the lab
Measuring, manipulating, and decoding how cells process information.
The Quantitative Biology Lab (Aoki Lab) studies how cells sense various substances outside the cell, process that information through intracellular reaction networks, and determine their own fate.
While developing quantitative measurement and perturbation technologies, the lab investigates how cells process information (encoding) and how they determine their fate (decoding).
Through an approach that also includes reconstructing cells in a computer, the lab aims to address the fundamental question of what it means to be alive.
The lab also has a branch at the Exploratory Research Center on Life and Living Systems (ExCELLS).
Key terms
- Signal transduction
- The mechanism by which a cell conveys information received from the outside into the cell through a relay of reactions between molecules
- Perturbation
- Deliberately altering a cell's response with drugs, light, or other means to change its state. It provides clues for investigating mechanisms
- Homeostasis
- The function of keeping the state of a cell or body constant even when the external environment changes
NewsLab news
Paper on OptoMDMi published in eLife
A doctoral student received the Best Poster Presentation Award at the 78th Annual Meeting of the Japan Society for Cell Biology
A master's student received a Poster Presentation Award at the area meeting of the Transformative Research Areas (A) "EPIC Assembly"
Paper on the control of collective cell migration by ZO-1 and ERK activation waves published in Nature Communications
ResearchResearch themes
Cells sense various substances outside the cell, process that information through intracellular reaction networks, and output adaptive phenotypes, thereby maintaining homeostasis as cells, tissues, and organisms. This lab studies how cells process information and determine their fate by developing quantitative measurement and perturbation technologies and by reconstructing cells in a computer.
Cell Fate Decisions
Using genetically encoded biosensors, the lab simultaneously visualizes cell fate decisions such as proliferation, differentiation, and death, together with the signal transduction involved, in living cells. It aims to clarify how continuous, analog signal transduction systems give rise to irreversible, digital events such as the cell cycle and cell death.
Dynamics of Signal Transduction
The lab investigates how much information cells obtain from the outside, how they encode it in signal transduction, and how they read it out as gene expression and phenotypes. Using multiplexed live-cell imaging, optogenetics, and information theory, it seeks to decipher the information embedded in dynamic signal transduction.
Technologies for Visualizing and Manipulating Signal Transduction
The lab develops fluorescent biosensors for visualizing intracellular signal transduction and optogenetic tools for manipulating it with light. By using the CRY2-CIB system, which responds to blue light, and the PhyB-PIF system, which responds to red and near-infrared light, it tests causal relationships between specific pathways and cell functions more directly.
MembersFaculty
Members of the Quantitative Biology group consist of faculty, a secretary, staff such as academic support staff and technical support staff, doctoral, master's, and undergraduate students, and members of the ExCELLS branch.As of 2026
- ProfessorKazuhiro Aoki
- Associate ProfessorYuhei Goto
- Program-Specific Associate ProfessorYukako Hattori
- Program-Specific LecturerSeiya Nishikawa
- Assistant ProfessorSayuki Hirano
- Assistant ProfessorAika Toyama
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