Professor Joseph Takahashi

Joseph Takahashi, Ph.D., FAAAS is a Japanese American neurobiologist and geneticist. He holds the Loyd B. Sands Distinguished Chair in Neuroscience and is Professor and Chair of the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. He is also Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Before moving to UT Southwestern, Joe was the Walter and Mary Elizabeth Glass Professor in the Life Sciences at Northwestern University. During his 26-year tenure at Northwestern, he held appointments as Professor in the Department of Neurobiology and Physiology on the Evanston campus and Professor in the Department of Neurology at Northwestern University Medical School. In addition, he was also the Director of the Center for Functional Genomics.

He is cofounder of ReSet Therapeutics, a biotech company that works on the role of clocks in metabolism.

His research group discovered the genetic basis for the mammalian circadian clock in 1994 and identified the Clock gene in 1997. Read Functional identification of the mouse circadian Clock gene by transgenic BAC rescue and Found in Mouse: The Gene of a Night Owl.

His primary areas of study are circadian rhythm, circadian clock, CLOCK, and the suprachiasmatic nucleus. Circadian rhythm is the topic of his studies on endocrinology, internal medicine, and neuroscience. His Endocrinology research is multidisciplinary, incorporating elements of sleep deprivation, aging, and disease. Read the Importance of circadian timing for aging and longevity and Genomics of circadian rhythms in health and disease.

His study of the circadian clock focuses on CLOCK proteins, period circadian proteins, oscillating genes, ARNTL transcription factors, and the RAR-related orphan receptor alpha. His research investigates the connection between CLOCK and topics such as E-box that intersect with issues in transcriptome. The various areas that Joe examines in his Suprachiasmatic nucleus study include CREB in cognition and cell biology.

In recent years, Joe has been studying the effects of the circadian clock on aging. His study Circadian alignment of early onset caloric restriction promotes longevity in male C57BL/6J mice focuses on timing eating and fasting for longevity. They discovered that eating only at certain times of day appears to promote longevity in animals and could provide a new mechanism for the treatment and management of aging in humans.

Joe was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2003 with his Inaugural Article PERIOD2::LUCIFERASE real-time reporting of circadian dynamics reveals persistent circadian oscillations in mouse peripheral tissues. He was also elected and has been a member of the National Academy of Medicine since 2014.

Joe was a 2016 Farrel Prize in Sleep Medicine Recipient, awarded in celebration of his life and work and for his landmark discoveries in the field of circadian rhythms, pioneering the use of forward genetics and positional cloning in the mouse as a tool for the discovery of circadian genes.

Joe’s notable scientific contributions include:

• Discovering, isolating, and cloning CLOCK, the first gene identified within the core mechanism of the mammalian circadian clock. Read Positional Cloning of the Mouse Circadian Clock Gene.
• Cloning of the tau mutation in hamsters, identified as a mutation in the casein kinase 1 epsilon (CSNK1E) gene. Read Positional Syntenic Cloning and Functional Characterization of the Mammalian Circadian Mutation tau.
• Demonstrating that the photoreceptive system responsible for the entrainment of mammalian circadian rhythms is different from that of the visual system. Read Sensitivity and integration in a visual pathway for circadian entrainment in the hamster (Mesocricetus auratus).
• Uncovering the 3D crystal structure of the CLOCK-BMAL1 protein complex, laying the foundation for understanding the mechanism driving the mammalian circadian clock at an atomic level. Read the Role of the CLOCK protein in the mammalian circadian mechanism and the Crystal structure of the heterodimeric CLOCK: BMAL1 transcriptional activator complex.
• Revealing the importance of body temperature fluctuations for the entrainment of peripheral oscillators in mammals. Read Temperature as a universal resetting cue for mammalian circadian oscillators.
• Establishing mechanistic links between circadian clock genes and metabolism. Read Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome in Circadian Clock Mutant Mice.
• Recognizing the functional role of rhythmic gene expression for optimizing energy utilization and conservation.

In addition to contributing to more than 300 publications in his field, Joe has served on the editorial boards for a number of journals, including Neuron and Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

Joe is Fellow of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation since 1983, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2000, and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) since 2001.

He has been recognized for his academic accomplishments with numerous awards, including the Honma Prize in Biological Rhythms Research in 1986; the Sixth C. U. Ariens Kappers Award from the Netherlands Society for the Advancement of Sciences, Medicine, and Surgery in 1995; the W. Alden Spencer Award in Neuroscience from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 2001; the Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award from the Sleep Research Society in 2012; and the Gruber Prize in Neuroscience from the Society for Neuroscience in 2019.

Joe has also been awarded a number of grants, including the MERIT Award from the National Institute of Mental Health in 1987 and the Bristol-Myers Squibb Unrestricted Grant for Neuroscience Research (1995–1999).

His dedication extends beyond the laboratory and into the classroom, earning him a Faculty Honor Roll award for teaching from the Associated Student Government at Northwestern in 1987. In 2000, Joe presented, along with fellow circadian researcher Michael Rosbash, an HHMI lecture series on biological clocks to an international audience of high school students.

Joe earned his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Oregon in 1981. For postdoctoral training, he was a pharmacology research associate at the National Institute of Mental Health from 1981–1983. He earned his Bachelor’s Degree of Arts in Biology from Swarthmore College in 1974.

Watch Circadian Clock Mechanisms in Mammals & Their Relevance to Aging & Longevity, Joseph Takahashi at ARDD2022: Circadian clocks and their impact on MetaBOLISM, aging, and longevity, and Joseph Takahashi, Ph.D. Circadian Revelations. Watch his Public Lecture on Circadian Clocks.

Read Coordinated Transcription of Key Pathways in the Mouse by the Circadian Clock, Epigenetic inheritance of circadian period in clonal cells, and Circadian Researcher Joseph S. Takahashi Reflects on How Far the Field Has Come.

Read Filipa Rijo-Ferreira: Zeroing in on Circadian Rhythms in Parasitic Diseases. Read Changing When and How Much We Eat May Extend Healthspan. Read Dr. Joseph Takahashi: Circadian Revelations.

Visit his LinkedIn profile, Wikipedia page, Neurotree publications list, and Research.com profile. Read his CV and his PNAS Bio. Follow him on the AD Scientific Index page, ResearchGate, Google Scholar, Facebook, and Twitter.