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Morphology and Function III Lab
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The lab explores, through genomics, how plants sense and respond to their environment.
AboutAbout the lab
Exploring the mechanisms of life through plants.
The Morphology and Function III Lab studies how plants sense and respond to their environment in order to live.
Because plants cannot move from place to place, they detect changes such as heat, cold, drought, light, and surrounding organisms, and regulate gene activity and growth accordingly.
Combining genetics, molecular biology, and genome and epigenome analysis, the lab investigates how plants receive, remember, and respond to environmental information.
The central themes are responses to environmental stress, epigenetics, transposons, and communication between plants.
Key terms
- Epigenetics
- A mechanism that switches genes on or off without changing the sequence of DNA bases
- Transposon
- A DNA sequence that can move within the genome. In many organisms it makes up a large part of the genome
- Signal transduction pathway
- The route by which a cell receives a stimulus from outside and relays it step by step to the inside to trigger a response
NewsLab news
Paper on plant volatile compounds and heat tolerance published in Journal of Plant Research
Paper on the regulation of heat-activated transposons published in Biology Open
Paper by a doctoral student accepted by Plant and Cell Physiology
Paper on DNA methylation and gene responses published in Plant Gene
Paper published in Molecular Genetics and Genomics
ResearchResearch themes
The lab investigates how the genome behaves and how plants respond when they are exposed to various stresses. By understanding at the molecular level how plants cope with stress, the lab aims to contribute to the development of stress-tolerant crops.
*Illustrative imageIdentification of Stress-Responsive Genes
The lab identifies the genes and genetic pathways that act when plants respond to stresses such as drought, heat, cold, salinity, and pathogens. This knowledge is also useful for breeding stress-tolerant crops.
*Illustrative imageGenome Stability under Stress
The lab explores how stress affects the stability of the plant genome. It studies the mechanisms of DNA damage and repair, as well as epigenetic modifications, that change gene activity in response to stress.
*Illustrative imageMolecular Mechanisms of Stress Adaptation
The lab studies the molecular mechanisms by which plants adapt to stressful environments. Its targets include signal transduction pathways involved in stress responses, transcriptional regulation, and post-translational modification of proteins.
*Illustrative imageComparative Genomics
By comparing genomes, the lab examines how stress responses differ among plant species and varieties. It compares stress-tolerant and stress-sensitive plants side by side to find the genetic variants involved in tolerance.
MembersFaculty
The members of the Morphology and Function III Lab are faculty and students in the doctoral, master's, and undergraduate programs.As of 2026
- Associate ProfessorHidetaka Ito
VoicesStudent voices
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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: “Arabidopsis thal background” Reo On / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
- Identification of Stress-Responsive Genes: “glace” Thomas Bresson / CC BY 4.0 (cropped)
- Genome Stability under Stress: “Electrophoresis on agarose gel” Maryfilip98 / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Molecular Mechanisms of Stress Adaptation: “Arabidopsis seedlings growth in vitro” Alena Kravchenko / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Comparative Genomics: “GEM corn” Keith Weller, USDA / Public domain (cropped)
- Related lab (Miwa Lab): “Rapsfeld Rapeseed Brassica napus” Richard Bartz, Munich aka Makro Freak / CC BY-SA 2.5 (cropped)
- Related lab (RTNakano Lab): “-Chlorophytum comosum-02” Wildfeuer / CC BY 2.5 (cropped)
- Related lab (Kitada Lab): “Rat eating or praying?” Jean-Etienne Poirrier / CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Diversity Biology Ib Lab): “Drosophila mimica” Shchurch / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
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