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

Ever since I entered graduate school and began my research, I have always focused on unicellular organisms. During my master's course, I cultured the unicellular red alga Cyanidioschyzon merolae for the first time in Japan, and observed its division pattern over time; C. merolae is an organism that grows by binary fission, and I analyzed how a mitochondrion and a chloroplast divide in sync with the cell nucleus during cell division. By development of live imaging technology using fluorescent proteins, we could track the dynamism of life in living cells. During my doctoral course, I conducted autophagy research using the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae in the laboratory of Dr. Yoshinori Ohsumi at the National Institute for Basic Biology. The core organelle in autophagy is a double membrane-bound organelle termed the autophagosome. I identified the site where autophagosome formation occurs by live imaging using fluorescent proteins. Currently, I continue to study the molecular mechanism of autophagosome formation. Recently, I have been focusing on non-membrane organelles formed by liquid-liquid phase separation, and analyzing the dynamics of intracellular structures in response to the environment by live imaging.