Research Subjects

How do plants differ from animals?

Why do plants have totipotent cells and remarkable regenerative abilities? How do plant cells avoid becoming cancerous, despite their ability to keep dividing infinitely? Can we find a way to apply the hidden potential of plant cells to our animal cells?

Plants support the ecosystem of Earth as primary producers, provide healthful food and healing compounds, and are our indispensable partners. How do plants sense, respond and grow based on changes in their surroundings? How does evolution change their developmental programs and environment adaptation mechanisms? How will plants change in the future?

Our research approaches these question from various angles to examine the control of plant cell proliferation and differentiation and the remarkable abilities of plants to adapt to their environments. We endeavor to find how plants regulate their cell proliferation and specialization to control cell fate. We also endeavor to discover how plants tolerate environmental stresses and to shed light on the crosstalk between plant development and environmental responses. One important goal of studying this crosstalk is developing improved crop plants that can grow well, even in hostile environments.

Our plant research will prove useful in solving some of the problems we currently face as a society, including the need to feed all the people on this planet we share. The members of our group enjoy a fulfilling life as researchers with like-minded friends, and build a foundation for their scientific abilities, career development, and ability to help improve plants, and to help society.

Here, we list our research themes in progress, including possible themes, many of which have deep reciprocal connections to each other.

Basic principle of plant growth and development

How do plants create such diverse and beautiful forms?

This simple question lies at the heart of our research. We study how plants establish body axes, coordinate cell polarity, form organs, and adjust their growth in response to the environment. Although plants cannot move from place to place, they constantly reshape their bodies as they respond to changing conditions such as light, gravity, drought, and wounding.

Plant form is not determined by genetic programs alone. It emerges from the interplay between cell polarity, plant hormones, environmental signals, and evolutionary history.

In our laboratory, we investigate the mechanisms that underlie plant morphogenesis, with particular interest in plant hormones such as auxin and cytokinin, cell polarity, vesicle trafficking, the cytoskeleton, and membrane organization. We combine live imaging, molecular genetics, cell biology, bioinformatics, and mathematical biology to understand how complex developmental processes are regulated and coordinated.

Our research extends beyond classical model plants such as Arabidopsis. We also work with mosses, liverworts, ferns, and other non-model plant species. By comparing diverse plant lineages, we aim to understand how plants acquired and modified the developmental mechanisms that generate their remarkable variety of forms.

Plant shape is more than appearance. It reflects cellular behavior, hormonal information, environmental responses, and evolutionary history. Our goal is to uncover the principles that allow plants to grow flexibly and produce diverse forms, connecting molecular, cellular, organismal, and evolutionary scales.

We welcome students and researchers who are interested in plant morphogenesis, live imaging, evolutionary developmental biology, plant hormones, cell polarity, mathematical biology, and non-model plants such as liverworts, mosses, and ferns. Our research group has only recently started, and this website is still under development. For more details about our current research, please feel free to contact us by email.