astronomy

Minoru Kanehisa

Minoru Kanehisa is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Minoru Kanehisa rather than just read about it. In short: Minoru Kanehisa (金久實) (born January 23, 1948) is a Japanese bioinformatician. He is a project professor at Kyoto University, technical director of Pathway Solutions Inc and president of NPO Bioinformatics Japan.

Key takeaways

Minoru Kanehisa belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Minoru Kanehisa to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Minoru Kanehisa from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Minoru Kanehisa (金久實) (born January 23, 1948) is a Japanese bioinformatician. He is a project professor at Kyoto University, technical director of Pathway Solutions Inc and president of NPO Bioinformatics Japan. He is one of Japan's most recognized and respected bioinformatics experts and is known for developing the KEGG bioinformatics database. In 2018 he was listed on a list of Clarivate Citation Laureates for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for "contributions to bioinformatics, specifically for his development of the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG)".

Career Kanehisa studied at the University of Tokyo, gaining his Doctor of Science degree in physics in 1976. Following postdoctoral studies at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Los Alamos National Laboratory, he became a staff scientist at Los Alamos in 1981. While at Los Alamos, he was one of the developers of the GenBank database of all publicly available nucleotide sequences and their protein translations. Kanehisa joined Kyoto University as an associate professor in 1985, becoming a professor in 1987. In 1995, Kanehisa started the KEGG (Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes) database project. Foreseeing the need for a computerized resource that can be used for biological interpretation of genome sequence data, he started developing the KEGG PATHWAY database. It is a collection of manually drawn KEGG pathway maps representing experimental knowledge on metabolism and various other functions of the cell and the organism. Each pathway map contains a network of molecular interactions and reactions and is designed to link genes in the genome to gene products (mostly proteins) in the pathway. This has enabled the analysis called KEGG pathway mapping, whereby the gene content in the genome is compared with the KEGG PATHWAY database to examine which pathways and associated functions are likely to be encoded in the genome.

Awards and honors In 1999, Kanehisa was elected the first president of the Japanese Society for Bioinformatics. He was elected as a Fellow of the International Society for Computational Biology in 2013.

References

Links Tadashi Kanehisa, his uncle, a folklorist and linguist

External links Minoru Kanehisa homepage ResearchMap profile

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Minoru Kanehisa

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Minoru Kanehisa claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Minoru Kanehisa before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Minoru Kanehisa ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Minoru Kanehisa

In research: Minoru Kanehisa appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Minoru Kanehisa in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Minoru Kanehisa is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1948 births, Japanese bioinformaticians, Living people, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Minoru Kanehisa outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Minoru Kanehisa in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Minoru Kanehisa means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Minoru Kanehisa out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Minoru Kanehisa in simple terms?

Why does Minoru Kanehisa matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Minoru Kanehisa?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Minoru Kanehisa.