Disclaimer: machine translated by DeepL which may contain errors.
Professor Yuichi Tsukatani was awarded the Medal with Purple Ribbon in the fall of 2021.
Atsushi Kawakita (Director of the Botanical Garden / Professor, Department of Biological Sciences)
Professor Yuichi Tsukatani
Professor Yuichi Tsukatani of Department of Biological Sciences has received the Medal with Purple Ribbon, which is awarded to those who have made significant achievements in the fields of academics, arts, and sports. We extend our heartfelt congratulations to him. Professor Tsukatani has long been a world leader in research on leaf morphogenesis, and has made outstanding achievements in botany, such as elucidating the basic mechanism of two-dimensional leaf growth and the evolutionary process of various leaves found in nature.
Professor Tsukatani pioneered the study of leaf morphogenesis using Arabidopsis thaliana as a model plant, and showed that two-dimensional leaf growth is regulated in four different ways, regulating cell number and cell size in each of the two directions (vertical and horizontal), and clarified all the genes and their functions involved in each. We also discovered that a protein called AN3, which causes leaf planar growth, determines the spatial arrangement of cell proliferation zones by diffusion between cells, and that when the number of leaf cells is reduced due to genetic abnormalities, the cell size abnormally increases as if to compensate for this reduction. Based on this basic understanding of leaf morphogenesis in model plants, Professor Tsukatani focused on the evolutionary process of some of the most enigmatic leaves in classical plant morphology, such as the pseudobranch of asparagus, the insectivorous leaf of the insectivorous plant Sarracenia, the unifacial leaf with only the reverse side of its leaf, and the monophylla, which spends its entire life on a single leaf. monophylla, which spends its entire life in a single leaf. Furthermore, he has named 44 new plant taxa, including one new genus and 30 new species, based on field surveys in Japan and abroad, and has made outstanding achievements in the field of diversity biology.
For these outstanding achievements, he has been awarded the JSPS Award, the Konosuke Matsushita Memorial Expo '70 Encouragement Award, the Hirase Award of the Botanical Morphological Society of Japan, and the Botanical Society of Japan Award for Academic Achievement.
We would like to congratulate him on receiving this award and wish him continued success in his future endeavors.
Faculty of Science News November 2020