The seminar titled "The in silico analysis of transcriptional regulatory regions" was held on December 17, 2008, at Icho-kaikan in Osaka University. The lecturer was Dr. Kenta Nakai, Professor of the laboratory of Functional Analysis in silico, Human Genome Center, Institute of Medical Science, The University of Tokyo.

Prof. Nakai is an expert in the field of "in silico" analysis. The term "in silico" means "in the silicon chip", which means "with computers". This word is used like "in vivo" (in living bodies) or "in vitro" (in test tubes) in biology. As associated with this word, the functions of various genes are computationally analyzed in the laboratory of Prof. Nakai.

In this seminar, Prof. Nakai presented the systematical analysis in transcriptional regulatory regions of bacterial genes and analysis of promoters.

The "in silico" analysis is expected to be applied for prediction of immune reactions in the future. His laboratory has been collaborating with Dr. Daron M. Standley, a Principal Investigator of Systems Immunology laboratory in IFReC.