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Kentaro Yoshida
Current Position: Researcher, Iwate biotechnology center, Japan
Education: PhD: Department of Agriculture, Kyoto University, Japan
Non-scientific Interests: Skiing, climbing, hiking, and traveling
As an undergraduate student, I often went to the mountains and spent time in the forest. I was fascinated by the various plant species surviving in such strict environments, and their many interactions with other plants, insects and fungi. I wondered how they could adapt to their environments, and develop such interactions during their evolutionary history. These questions motivated me to study population genetics and plant-microbe interactions. For my PhD studies, I studied plant population genetics with Dr. Naohiko T Miyashita in the Laboratory of Plant Genetics, Kyoto University. I tried to elucidate the maintenance mechanisms of DNA polymorphisms in the nuclear genes of Arabidopsis thaliana and wild rice Oryza rufipogon. After receiving my PhD, I joined the group of Dr. Ryohei Terauchi at the Iwate Bioctechnology Center, where I have been able to combine both sequence analysis and wet lab experiments, working on the effectors of the rice blast fungus, Magnaporthe oryzae. The study of effector proteins and genes is exciting, because it gives us a chance to understand fierce battles between plant and pathogen at the molecular level. The evolutionary history of plant-pathogen interaction is likely to leave footprints in natural sequence variations of effectors. Focusing on the variations of the secreted protein genes among different blast fungus isolates has brought us success in identifying novel effector genes using association genetics.
Current Position: Postdoctoral Fellow, Genetics & Genomics Group, Iwate Biotechnology Research Center, Japan
Education: B.S (1993): School of Science and Engineering, Teikyo University, Japan. M.S (1995), Graduate School of Bioresources, Mie University, Japan. PhD (1999), College of Agriculture, Osaka Prefecture University, Japan
Non-scientific Interests: Playing volley ball, skiing, watching baseball and traveling
While working at Teikyo University in Japan, I became interested in plant-microbe interactions by studying a tomato mosaic virus RNA sequence that is required for systemic viral movement and propagation in tobacco. I studied fungal elicitors and phytoalexins in barley-Blumeria graminis interactions for my MSc at Mie University, Japan. In my PhD work, at Osaka Prefecture University, I found that the coat protein gene is essential for the systemic infection at high temperature of cucumber mosaic virus in Cucumis figarei, a wild African relative of C. melo (melon). After receiving my PhD I joined Ryohei Terauchi’s lab at Iwate Biotechnology Research Center (IBRC), Japan where I used virus-induced gene silencing and overexpression to study defense related genes in Nicotiana benthamiana, and analysed gene expression in Magnaporthe oryzae during appressorium formation. I spent about two years studying ethylene mediated cross-talk between calcium-dependent protein kinase and mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling in N. benthamiana stress responses with Tina Romeis at the Max-Planck-Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, before rejoining Dr. Terauchi’s group at IBRC to study M. oryzae effector gene function. In this project we used rice blast association genetics to isolate avirulence (AVR) genes. We found three novel AVR genes from M.oryzae that induce the hypersensitive response in rice cultivars harboring each corresponding resistance gene.
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| ASPB Publications | THE PLANT CELL | PLANT PHYSIOLOGY | |
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