Kenichi Yokoyama is an enzymologist, chemical biologist, and natural product biochemist originally from Tokyo, Japan.
For his doctoral work, he elucidated the catalytic mechanism of enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of aminoglycoside antibiotics under the guidance of Tadashi Eguchi.
[1] From 2008 through 2011, he pursued postdoctoral studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with enzymologist JoAnne Stubbe.
Yokoyama's aims are to characterize the biosynthetic pathways of such molecules and to understand the functions of enzymes that are involved in the process.
[4] The lab also resolved a multidecade-long mystery in the field by revising the catalytic functions of the first two enzymes in the pathway, MoaA and MoaC.