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Ishikawa Lab
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The lab uses the threespine stickleback as a model to explore the mechanisms of adaptive evolution in living organisms.
AboutAbout the lab
Understanding adaptive evolution through molecules and ecology
Ishikawa Lab studies the mechanisms (adaptive evolution) by which organisms have come to have diverse forms, behaviors, and life histories suited to the environments they live in.
Using the threespine stickleback, a fish in the stickleback family, as its main model, the lab searches for the genes and genetic variants that cause differences in form and traits in nature.
The lab investigates the molecular functions of the variants it finds, their effects on survival and reproduction, their evolutionary origins, and even their impact on ecosystems.
Key terms
- Adaptive evolution
- Evolution in which organisms gradually acquire, over successive generations, traits that make it easier to survive and leave offspring in the environment they live in
- Life history
- How an organism spends its life, from birth through growth and migration to reproduction
- Chromatin
- DNA wrapped around proteins and folded inside the cell nucleus; it is involved in how genes are regulated
NewsLab news
A paper comparing chromatin in the pituitary glands of marine and freshwater stickleback was published in Phil Trans R Soc B
A paper by Associate Professor Ishikawa and colleagues was published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biologic…
A paper by Associate Professor Ishikawa and colleagues was published in Zoological science
A paper by Assistant Professor Tamagawa and colleagues was published in Science Advances
A paper by Assistant Professor Tamagawa and colleagues was published in Royal Society open science
ResearchResearch themes
The lab aims to clarify, from both molecular and ecological perspectives, the mechanisms of adaptive evolution that drive the diversification of organisms. Its models are the threespine stickleback and its close relatives, which colonized freshwater habitats in various regions after the Ice Age and split into diverse populations.
*Illustrative imageGenetic mechanisms behind life history diversification
Many organisms grow, migrate, and reproduce in step with seasonal change. Using stickleback populations with different life histories, the lab identifies the genes and genetic variants responsible for those differences and investigates their functions, their effects on fitness, and their evolutionary origins.
*Illustrative imageThe ability to colonize new environments
Some species repeatedly colonize new environments, while others never do. Using stickleback populations that differ in their responses to nutrition, osmotic pressure, temperature, and other factors, the lab searches for the key genes underlying this difference.
*Illustrative imageDifferences in gene regulation and chromatin
Gene regulation (the transcriptome) and changes in chromatin structure are also thought to play important roles in adaptive evolution. In stickleback populations living in different environments, the lab investigates the genetic mechanisms that produce these differences and the roles they play.
MembersFaculty
Members of Ishikawa Lab include faculty, postdocs, doctoral and master's students, international research students, and technical assistants.As of 2026
- ProfessorIshikawa AsanoPublications ↗
- Assistant ProfessorKatsunori Tamagawa
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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: “Gasterosteus aculeatus - Epinoche - Three-spined stickleback” Gilles San Martin / CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped)
- Genetic mechanisms behind life history diversification: “Three-spined Stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus), Embo beach - geograph.org.uk - 4101646” Mike Pennington / CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped)
- The ability to colonize new environments: “Dreistachlige Stichling Gasterosteus aculeatus” Holger Krisp / CC BY 4.0 (cropped)
- Differences in gene regulation and chromatin: “Gasterosteus aculeatus” Gilles San Martin / CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped)
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