The project meeting 2017 was held on 1-2/Jun/2017 at ES Hall, Nagoya University.

This meeting was the first meeting after the 19 accosiation research groups were newly added.

The keyword for the meeting was "Innovative collaboration for Interdisciplinary research".

A total of 119 people participated for two days and it became a very fruiteful meeting.

　

Prof. Tesuya HIGASHIYAMA (Nagoya University, Institute of Transformative Bio-molecules) received the 25th Kihara Memorial Foundation Academic Award.

The award ceremony was held at Kihara Institute for Biological Research, Yokohama City University on 19th May 2017.

　

See details of the ceremony → Higashiyama Lab. web site (Japanese only)

　

19 Associated Research Groups have been newly joined to our research area.

List and details of each group are here. (In Japanese)

We published the results of an international collaboration with the University of Geneva on eLIFE. Prof. Luis Lopez-Molina has been studied the parent-of-origin effect in seed dormancy, which is controlled by the endosperm during seed germination in Arabidopsis thaliana. In this study, they identified many maternally expressed imprinted genes and a small numbers of paternally expressed imprinted genes in the mature endosperm. Some of them are related to the maternal inheritance of seed dormancy. We participated in experiments related to the imprinted FWA gene.

I first recognized that FWA is expressed in the germinating seeds many years ago (Kinoshita 2004) and was delighted to see how this original observation has been expanded to provide new insight into regulatory mechanisms in seed dormancy.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28005006

Tetsu Kinoshita

Our new project on principles in the birth of new plant species has launched in Japan. Currently 24 researchers are involved in this project. More than 15 researchers will be added next April. This project is for 5 years from 2016 to 2021. Researchers in the sexual plant reproduction field will work together with structural biologists, synthetic chemists, and bioinformaticians. Live-cell imaging is also our strength. Collaboration and networking are expected between our project and foreign researchers.

Photographs show our kickoff symposium and seven core researchers (from left to right: Seiji Takayama, Miyako Ueguchi-Tanaka, Masao Watanabe, Tetsuya Higashiyama, Hiroyuki Tsuji, Tetsu Kinoshita, Jun Sese).

Other researchers involve (Nagoya) M. Kanaoka, J. Bode, K. Itami, S. Yamaguchi, M. Matsuoka, N. Watanabe, (Yokohama) T. Ban, K. Shimizu, (Nara) T. Ito, S. Fujii, K. Murase, (Chiba) T. Tsuchimatsu, (Ehime) T. Sawazaki, (Osaka) G. Suzuki, (Mie) K. Suwabe, (Kyoto) T. Akagi, A. Kawabe.

We will try to provide new concepts and technologies regarding the birth of new plant species and lock-and-key molecular systems in sexual reproduction.

Best wishes,

Tetsuya Higashiyama

Research Director of the project "Determining principles in the birth of new plant species: elucidation of lock-and-key molecular systems in sexual reproduction" http://www.ige.tohoku.ac.jp/prg/plant/english/outline.html

President of International Association of Sexual Plant Reproduction Research (IASPRR)

http://www.iasprr.org/

Vice-director/Professor of Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules (ITbM), Nagoya University

http://www.itbm.nagoya-u.ac.jp/

Professor of Graduate School of Science, Nagoya University http://www.bio.nagoya-u.ac.jp/english/