I was born in Imabari city, Ehime Prefecture. It is a towel-making and shipbuilding town located at the entrance on the Shikoku side of the Honshu-Shikoku Bridge, Imabari-Onomichi route. It might recently be most famous for Bary-san, the local mascot. I entered the Faculty of Agriculture at Tohoku University in 1984 and, after serving as an Assistant Professor, later lived in Sendai for 13 years. After seven years in Morioka, Iwate University, as an Associate Professor, I returned to Tohoku University, Sendai, as full Professor in April 2005, and am now entering my 30th year here. During this time conducting University research, I have consistently researched plant reproduction, particularly the identification, isolation, and interaction of the male and female S determinants regulating self-incompatibility (SI) in Brassica species, and have published papers in international scientific journals such as Nature and Science. 

 

The name of the laboratory was changed to "Plant Molecular Breeding" in the reorganization of Graduate School in 2017, but with the independence of the associate professor, the laboratory was renamed "Plant Reproductive Systems" in April 2024, returning to its roots of studying "reproductive traits in plants". 

 

Plants have thrived on earth using strategies for growth and reproduction adapted to their environment.  The important organ in reproductive strategy is "hermaphrodite" having female pistil and male stamen in a single flower.  Hermaphrodites are capable of self-fertilization, which ensures that the next generation can reproduce on its own, as well as reproduction through crossbreeding with other individuals, which allows for the maintenance of genetic diversity. 　During the evolutionary process, plants have established several reproductive systems suited to their environment by adjusting the balance between selfing and outcrossing in "hermaphrodites" through changes in the structure of reproductive organs and signal transduction systems at the molecular level.  As a result, a highly diverted variety of reproductive systems, such as self-incompatibility, dichogamy, and dioecy, which promote out crossing is established.

 

Focusing on self-incompatibility, one of the plant reproductive systems, in our laboratory, we will elucidate the molecular mechanisms controlling selfing and outcrossing in plants with genetic and physiological methods, thereby deepening the comprehensive understanding of plant reproductive strategies.

 

The interesting functional molecules (small peptides, receptor-type kinases, small RNAs, etc.) that we have discovered in our research on "self-incompatibility in cruciferous plants" have been shown to function in plant growth, differentiation, and morphogenesis, and we believe that they are also relevant to "adaptation" to the environment, a unique "response" of plants that are unable to move. We will clarify these mechanisms through joint research with borderline fields such as bioinformatics, structural biology, biochemistry, and organic chemistry, as well as engineering, social sciences, and humanities, which have been difficult to integrate, and clarify the molecular reality of the "essence of hermaphrodite flowers," "self-incompatibility in cruciferous plants," "pollination in plants," etc. that enable self-fertilization and cross-pollination. We hope to create a laboratory that aims to develop human resources with interdisciplinary concepts.

 

If you are interested in understanding the fundamentals of "life" using plants as materials, and in developing interdisciplinary research on a global level, please visit our laboratory. You will see a different image of "plants" in our laboratory. We are looking forward to seeing you.