Rikkyo University

Kanazawa University

The University of Tokyo Graduate School of Science

 

Overview

Rikkyo University (Toshima-ku, Tokyo; President: Renta Nishihara), Kanazawa University (Kanazawa-shi, Kanazawa; President: Koetsu Yamazaki), and The University of Tokyo (Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo; President: Teruo Fujii) announce that they have successfully developed a gene transfer technology for hornwort, an important strain for investigating the origin of land plants, as follows Keiko Sakakibara, Associate Professor, Department of Life Sciences, Faculty of Science, Rikkyo University, Tomoaki Nishiyama, Assistant Professor, Kanazawa University Research Center for Disease Modeling, and Yuichi Tsukatani, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo, are working with Dr. Eftychios Frangedakis of Cambridge University, UK (former JSPS Research Fellow, host: The University of Tokyo), Dr . Eftychios Frangedakis of the University of Zurich, Switzerland (former JSPS Research Fellow, host: The University of Zurich), and Dr. Eftychios Frangedakis of the University of Tokyo: (The University of Tokyo) and Dr. Peter Szövényi , Lecturer at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, formed an international research group and succeeded in establishing a method of gene transfer to the hornworts Anthoceros agrestis. Anthoceros agrestis is a key lineage in the evolution of the first land plants, which were separated from the chenopods and thais at the time when vascular plants were separated from chenopods and thais. Associate Professor Sakakibara and his colleagues reported the genome sequencing of the same hornworts in 2020, and the addition of these results paves the way for the functional analysis of hornworts' genes, which play a key role in the evolution of land plants.

The results of this research were published in the scientific journal " New Phytologist " ( June2, 2021 ), and the related photo was accepted for the cover (title of the article : An Agrobacterium-mediated stable transformation technique for the hornwort model Anthoceros agaricus. the hornwort model Anthoceros agrestis).

 

Figure: A. agrestis tissues cultured in different light environments.
(Top) Light as weak as daytime indoors without electricity ( 3-5 mmol^m-2s-1).
(Bottom) Light at 80 mmol^m-2s-1( outdoors on a cloudy day).

 

For more information, please visit the Rikkyo University website.