Author Profile

Kenji Okuda

Current Position: Postdoctoral researcher, Department of Botany, Graduate School of Science at Kyoto University, Japan

Education: PhD: Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Ehime University, Japan

Non-scientific Interests: Listening to and playing music, traveling, and collecting things of a good design

During my Ph.D. studies, I learned biochemistry and molecular biology. After that I had an opportunity to work with Professor Toshiharu Shikanai and I joined his start-up project on the mechanism of RNA editing in plant organelles. Since then, I have been studying the molecular mechanism and machinery of RNA editing in plastids. The machinery of RNA editing in plant organelles has puzzled scientists for about 20 years. Our discoveries have opened up the machinery of RNA editing and revealed that PPR proteins recognize the target site in RNA editing. After that, our focus of research moved to identify the catalytic enzyme of RNA editing. Our collaborators in Professor Ian Small’s group postulated that the DYW motif present in PPR proteins may be the catalytic domain. To assess this idea, we collaborated and found that the DYW domains have distinct functions in the processes of RNA editing and cleavage, as described in the manuscript. This research is exciting for me because we are now taking steps to fully understanding the mysterious strategies that plants employ at the molecular level.