Researcher Information

YAMAGUCHI Junji

Specially Appointed Professor

The appearance of living things is a history of environmental adaptation

Department of Biological Sciences, Cell Structure and Function

basic_photo_1
Theme

Strategies of environmental adaptation of organisms and their molecular mechanism

FieldPlant biology, Biochemistry
KeywordEnvironmental adaptation, Immunity, Cell death, Nutrient metabolism, Genome science, Ubiquitin/proteasome system

Introduction of Research

Plants that live on thesurface of the earth will survive by changing the microenvironment in the celland tissue against the severe external environmental change. This environmentaladaptation process is determined as a result of eventual integration of variousexternal environmental signaling with genetic programs. In the process, celldeath and conversion of the growth phase, will proceed while promoting internal regulation such as intracellular metabolism and transport system, eventuallychanging even the shape of the plant. Our goal is to elucidate suchenvironmental adaptation dynamism that higher plants only possess. And as anextension, we aim to create plants and/or crops that are beneficial to humansociety or the global environment by using important genes.

Representative Achievements

Arabidopsis CBL-interacting protein kinases regulate carbon/nitrogen-nutrient response by phosphorylating ubiquitin ligase ATL31, S.Yasuda, S. Aoyama, Y. Hasegawa, T. Sato amd J. Yamaguchi, Mol. Plant, 2017, 10, 605-618.
ABI1 regulates carbon/nitrogen-nutrient signal transduction independent of ABA biosynthesis and canonical ABA signalling pathways in Arabidopsis, Y. Lu, Y. Sasaki, X. Li, T. Matsuura, IC. Mori, T. Hirayama, T. Sato and J. Yamaguchi, J Exp. Bot., 2015, 66, 2763-2771.
Phosphorylation of Arabidopsis ubiquitin ligase ATL31 is critical for plant C/N-nutrient response under control of 14-3-3 stability, S. Yasuda, T. Sato, S. Maekawa, S. Aoyama, Y. Fukao and J. Yamaguchi, J. Biol. Chem., 2014, 289, 15179-15193.
The carbon/nitrogen regulator ATL31 controls papilla formation in response to powdery mildew fungi penetration by interacting with SYP121 in Arabidopsis. S. Maekawa, N. Inada, S. Yasuda, Y. Fukao, M. Fujiwara, T. Sato and J. Yamaguchi, Plant Physiol. 2014, 164, 879-887.
Ubiquitin ligase ATL31 functions in leaf senescence in response to the balance between atmospheric CO2 and nitrogen availability in Arabidopsis, S. Aoyama, T. Huarancca Reyes, L. Guglielminetti, L. Yu, Y. Morita, T. Sato and J. Yamaguchi, Plant Cell Physiol., 2014, 55, 293-305.
Academic degreePh.D.
Academic background1986, School of Agriculture, Nagoya University, PhD in Plant Biochemistry
1986, Postdoctoral Fellow, Rockefeller University
1987, Assistant Professor, Nagoya University
1995, Associate Professor, Nagoya University
2001-present, Professor, Hokkaido University
2003-2009, Program Officer, Special Coordination Funds for Promoting Science and Technology, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)
2014-2016, Dean, Graduate School of Life Science, Hokkaido University
2014-present, Vice President, Hokkaido University
Affiliated academic societyJapanese Society for Plant, Cell and Molecular Biology, The Japan Society of Plant, Physiologists
Room addressGeneral Research Building 5-711