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Kojima Lab
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The lab uses fruit flies to uncover how living things take shape.
AboutAbout the lab
The mechanisms behind the diverse ways living things take shape.
The Kojima Lab studies the mechanisms of morphogenesis, the process by which living things acquire their diverse forms.
Much progress has been made in understanding how cell identities are determined during development, but little is known about how the final form is completed afterward.
With more than one million species, insects show an outstanding diversity of form and are well suited to studying the mechanisms of morphogenesis.
The lab centers its research on analysis in Drosophila, combined with an evolutionary perspective that looks at differences from other insects.
Key terms
- Live imaging
- A method of continuously recording living cells or tissues under a microscope to observe changes over time
- Cuticle
- The tough layer covering the surface of an insect's body, which is shed during molting and eclosion
- Extracellular matrix
- The collection of substances outside cells that supports the shape and stiffness of tissues
NewsLab news
View More ↗ResearchResearch themes
The goal is to understand how form comes into being, how differences in form arise, and how form evolves. The lab studies insects, centering on Drosophila, for which tools for gene manipulation and visualization are well established.
*Illustrative imageHow the shape of the adult leg is formed
The tarsus, at the tip of an insect's leg, varies from species to species in both the number of segments and its shape, making it a good model for studying the evolution of form. The lab uses live imaging to observe in real time how the leg takes shape inside the pupa.
*Illustrative imageThe cuticle's "cut lines"
During molting and eclosion, the old cuticle does not split randomly but always opens at fixed positions. The lab examines the "cut lines" in the Drosophila puparium, aiming to clarify their structure, how they are made, and the mechanism that determines their position.
*Illustrative imageThe extracellular matrix and form
The cuticle is made of chitin and cuticle proteins secreted by epidermal cells. Because the properties of the cuticle change greatly depending on which cuticle proteins are used, the lab investigates how this contributes to shaping the body.
MembersFaculty
The members of the Kojima Lab are faculty and students in the doctoral and master's programs.
- Associate ProfessorTetsuya KojimaPublications ↗
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Report an errorAbout the images
The top and research theme images are illustrative and were not taken at the lab. They are cropped from Wikimedia Commons images. Cropped CC BY-SA images are provided under the same CC BY-SA license as the original (version shown on each line).
- Top image: “Drosophila melanogaster - side (aka)” André Karwath aka Aka / CC BY-SA 2.5 (cropped)
- How the shape of the adult leg is formed: “Drosophila Puppe” Jcb herrmann / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
- The cuticle's "cut lines": “Dragonfly exuvia or empty exoskeleton” Hall Wild / CC BY 4.0 (cropped)
- The extracellular matrix and form: “Stick insect (Phasmatodea sp.) Las Tangaras” Charles J. Sharp / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
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