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

Her strong interest in the totipotency of plant cells led her to the plant research. As a graduate student, she performed molecular genetical and molecular biological analyses on a novel Arabidopsis thaliana mutants that showed abnormal organ regeneration, which is one of the examples of totipotency expression. After receiving a Ph.D., she continued the above research as a researcher in RIKEN, along with a research on xylem vessel cell differentiation using a wide range of plant species, such as poplar and Physcomitrella patens, with omics analysis. She has also shown the importance of RNA metabolism in plant organ regeneration and established “Researcher’s Network for Plant RNA in Japan.” After moving to Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST) as an Assistant Professor, she has been conducting research on plant RNA metabolism, and evolutionary developmental studies of water-conducting cell differentiation. As the results, the multifaceted post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression to control plant cell proliferation and differentiation has been revealed. In 2019, she will join the University of Tokyo as Associate Professor of Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, where she run the Laboratory of Plant Functional Analyses. She conducts multi-angled plant researches, from micro level (molecular) to macro level (individual tree), in order to "understand how plants live in terms of molecules.