Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo Department of
Integrated Biosciences

Occupying about 70% of the total surface area of the earth, the oceans represent the largest aquatic habitat and have served as a cradle of evolution during the past 3 billion years. This research group uses advanced technology and approaches to explore the life in the ocean from the perspective of evolution, ecology and material cycles. Our research goals are to elucidate adaptive and survival strategies of marine organisms and to investigate key processes involved in the maintenance and regulation of marine.

Phytoplankton is primary producer in marine ecosystem fixed 50 giga ton carbon per year.　Zooplankton transports primary production to higher trophic levels and supports 90 million tons of world fisheries production. We are studying phytoplankton and zooplankton to understand the genetic, physiological and ecological characteristics and the role on food web dynamics and global biogeochemical cycles. Our studies are based on both field studies using coastal stations and research vessels and also laboratory studies including incubation experiment and various genetic and chemical analyses. Our study fields are from coastal water around Japan to arctic and tropical oceans.

Marine microbes are the key to understand currently emerging issues in our society such as sustainability of natural environments, global change of climate and human health. They are also expected to be novel gene resources. Since most of them have never been cultured, many challenging scientific issues remain to be unexplored. Fundamental questions are: what kinds of microbes are living in the ocean? how are they working? how marine ecosystems are working together with microbes and changing in the future? We investigate the diversity and function of marine microbes as well as structure and function of marine microbial food webs and organic matter-microbe interactions in the ocean.

Marine environments show great seasonal and geographical variations, and such environmental conditions shape the morphologies, behaviors, and life histories of marine animals. How do the life histories of marine animals evolve? How do environmental changes affect life history and population dynamics of marine animals? To answer such questions, we are studying the reproductive behavior and life history of cephalopods. Cephalopods have conspicuous intra-specific communications based on high cognitive ability and characteristic mating-sperm storage-fertilization process. Therefore, we are focusing our research on pre- and post-copulatory sexual selections, and are doing fieldwork, captive behavioral experiments, and morphological analysis.

Coral reefs are among the most biodiverse marine ecosystems on the planet, and they are constructed by reef-building (stony) corals (Cnidaria). Using whole genome information on corals and their intracellular symbiotic algae (zooxanthellae), we are comprehensively studying coral reef ecosystems, identifying unique features of coral and zooxanthella genomes, gene expression responses of corals to environmental changes, evolution of coral adaptation to past environmental changes, and molecular bases of symbiotic mechanisms between corals and zooxanthellae. In addition to basic genomic and molecular research, we conduct population genome analysis, environmental DNA analysis, and other research and technological development to support conservation and restoration of coral reefs.