DATE2024.09.24 #Awards & Prizes

Project Assistant Professor Akihisa Osakabe received the 2024 Encouragement Award from the Genetics Society of Japan

Disclaimer: machine translated by DeepL which may contain errors.

Project Assistant Professor Akihisa Osakabe

Dr. Akihisa Osakabe, Project Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, has received "The Genetics Society of Japan Encouragement Award 2024" for his "Research on the transposon silencing/expression regulated by histone variant dynamics in Arabidopsis.” Congratulations!

He has been working in the Department of Biological Sciences since 2020. Using Arabidopsis thaliana as a model plant, he focuses on the field called "epigenetics," which investigates the mechanisms regulating gene function. Histone protein is a central player of the epigenetic mechanisms, and "histone variants" are specialized ones that differ in amino acid sequences within histones. He has discovered a mechanism by which histone variants control "transposons", which are mobile DNA elements that proliferate within the genome. His series of discoveries on histone variants and their role in transposon regulation, along with his future research potential, were highly praised and led to this award. Arabidopsis is a model plant that is widely used in epigenetics research by genetics, and his strength lies in his approach to integrate genetics with biochemistry and structural biology. I am very pleased to see this award as an indication of power of his approaches and the potential of his research.

2024 Encouragement Award of the Genetics Society of Japan

(Responsibility: Professor Tetsuji Kakutani, Department of Biological Sciences)