Current Position: Graduate student in Plant Evolutionary Biology Lab and the Division of Life Sciences and Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology at Kanazawa University, Japan.
Education: M.S (2009) in Biology at University of Tokyo, Japan.
Non-scientific Interests: Cooking
When I was undergraduate student at the University of Tsukuba, I read the book “Evolution of Plant Morphology” (in Japanese) written by Dr. Masahiro Kato that described his evolutionary studies of many novel plant morphologies. I was attracted by the unusual, diverse morphologies of Podostemaceae, which I had never seen, and particularly interested in the evolution of their specialized body plan. Then, I decided to study on Podostemaceae and started a Master course study in Dr. Kato’s Lab at the University of Tokyo. My M.S. thesis was “Anatomy and Genetic Identity of Shoot Development in Hydrobryum japonicum.” Then, as a Ph.D. student in Dr. Toshihiro Yamada’s lab at Kanazawa University, I am studying the evolution of morphology including embryo and seedling in the Podostemaceae. The main focus of my research is the mechanisms underlying novel organogenesis and developmental modification involved in the evolution of the unique body plan. Fortunately I had opportunities to visit Asian, South American and African countries, and experiences gained during the Pododemaceae expeditions expanded my interest in morphological diversity of plants. I have fun discovering morphological novelty of plants, which may allow plants to invade new environments and diversify in new adaptive zones.
Current Position: Research Fellow of the Japan Society of the Promotion of Science, Graduate School of Biological Sciences, Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan.
Education: : PhD: Department of Biological Sciences, Graduate School of Science, University of Tokyo, Japan.
My interest is how morphological diversity of creatures has been established through evolution. I learned about river-weeds Podostemaceae from Prof. Kato when I entered the MS course. The podostemads have unique, diversified morphologies adapted to rapids, so I studied comparative morphology on shoots and roots of Podostemaceae to reveal their evolutionary processes, and our group found the SAM-less shoot organogenesis. Our paper implies that further molecular analyses would be fruitful for understanding the oddness and diversity of “leaf” in Podostemaceae, such as very elongated leaf (ca. 100 cm long) and flower-producing leaf.