Research

Laboratory of Plant Resource Sciences

Professor Fumiya Kurosaki, Ph.D.(concurrent post)
Assistant Professor Yoshimi Yamamura, Ph.D.

It is widely recognized that higher plant cells are rich sources of a variety of natural products for medicinal use. Numerous attempts have been made to secure and/or stimulate the productivities of these important secondary metabolites of plant cells; such as enhancement of the activities of biosynthetic enzymes of desired compounds with molecular biological and horticultural techniques, cultivation of plants in vitro and manipulation of the primary or secondary metabolism under artificially controlled conditions, and development of protection methods for medicinal plants against various environmental stresses.

Main research projects

  • 1.Molecular biology of secondary metabolites biosyntheses in medicinal plants
  • 2.Evaluation and screening of plant strains with high-productivities of valuable natural compounds, and breeding new varieties
  • 3.Characterization of virulence mechanism in pathogenic fungi and establishment of the molecular basis for plant defense mechanism

These approaches should allow the improvement of the quality of higher plants as the useful medicinal sources.

Left, Red pepper fruits with high-producing activity of capsaicin ; Center, In situ hybridization analysis of the expression of a biosynthetic enzyme gene of capsaicin ; Right, Plant pathogen Fusarium verticillioides.
(A, wild-type ; B-E, pathogenic gene-deletion mutants)