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Morphogenesis Lab (Tajiri Lab)
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The lab investigates how insects build the intricate structures of their shells and skin.
AboutAbout the lab
Building intricate three-dimensional structures outside the cell.
The Morphogenesis Lab studies how organisms make the materials that shape their own bodies.
Like vertebrate bone and plant cell walls, the cuticle, which is the shell and skin of insects, is a matrix built outside the cell (an extracellular matrix).
The properties of the cuticle are remarkably diverse: the hardness of a rhinoceros beetle, the brilliance of a jewel beetle, the water repellency of a water strider's legs.
The lab studies how insects build, outside their cells, the nano- to micro-scale three-dimensional structures that give rise to these properties.
Key terms
- Cuticle
- The shell and skin covering an insect's body. It is made of proteins and chitin, and gives the body hardness, color, water repellency, and other properties
- Chitin
- A fibrous polysaccharide similar to cellulose. One of the main components of the cuticle
- Extracellular matrix
- A matrix built outside cells. Bone, plant cell walls, and the insect cuticle are examples
NewsLab news
A paper on how the Drosophila hearing organ takes shape has been published in Discover Developmental Biology
A review article whose first author is a master's student has been published in the July issue of the monthly journal Saibo ("Cell")
Project Assistant Professor Shimoyama received the Excellent Presentation Award at the Kanto Branch Meeting of the Zoological Society of Japan
ResearchResearch themes
The diverse properties of the cuticle covering the body underpin the success of insects. These properties arise from the cuticle's dense three-dimensional structure. The lab discovered that proteins contained in the cuticle form this three-dimensional structure themselves, and is investigating how this works.
*Illustrative imageThe cuticle of Drosophila
The cuticle of Drosophila larvae is colorless and transparent, so by attaching fluorescent labels to the proteins and sugars inside it, the three-dimensional structure and the distribution of molecules within it can be captured in 3D from the outside. The lab follows how the structure forms as molecules move, interacting with other proteins and with chitin.
*Illustrative imageThe cuticles of diverse insects
Each insect species has from one hundred to several hundred cuticle proteins, and their number and sequences differ greatly between species. By combining the analytical methods developed so far with genome editing technology, the lab aims to uncover how diverse three-dimensional structures are made.
*Illustrative imageReassembling the cuticle
The cuticle of a living insect is said to contain several dozen cuticle proteins at each site. Because there are limits to distinguishing the function of each protein individually, the lab aims to build an experimental system in which the cuticle is reassembled in a test tube.
MembersFaculty
The members of the Morphogenesis Lab consist of faculty, technical assistants, and PhD, master's, and undergraduate students.As of 2026
- Associate ProfessorReiko Tajiri
- Project Assistant ProfessorHiroya Shimoyama
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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: “Spiral borer (Jewel beetle) ( ) (cropped)” arian.suresh from Chennai, India / CC BY 2.0 (cropped)
- The cuticle of Drosophila: “Fruit fly larva 01” RickP / CC BY 2.5 (cropped)
- The cuticles of diverse insects: “Giant pine weevil (Eurhamphus fasciculatus) specimens at Melbourne Museum” Ethmostigmus / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Reassembling the cuticle: “Test tubes in rack” J.N. Eskra / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Functional Ecology Lab): “Mountain Views, Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest ( )” U.S. Forest Service- Pacific Northwest Region / Public domain (cropped)
- Related lab (Developmental Genetics Lab (Ishikawa Lab)): “Fruitfly cultures ( )” Brian Gratwicke from DC, USA / CC BY 2.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Biological Molecular Motor Lab (Ito-Haraguchi Lab)): “Chara coralllina var. kyusyuensis” Show_ryu / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (Epigenome Structure and Dynamics Lab (Osakabe Lab)): “Arabidopsis Thaliana planted in Laboratory” Jucember / CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)
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