Recognizing Plant Physiology authors: Shinichiro Komaki

Shinichiro Komaki, first author of Functional analysis of the plant chromosomal passenger complex

Current Position: Assistant Professor, Division of Biological Science, NAIST, Japan

Education: Ph.D., Bioscience, NAIST, Japan

Non-scientific Interests: listening to music, finding clover mutants

Brief bio: The beauty of nature has inspired me during my entire research life. My particular interest in the beauty of “cell division” developed when I was a PhD student at the NAIST in Nara, Japan. During my PhD, supervised by Prof. Takashi Hashimoto, I studied cell division from the aspect of microtubule organization. After finishing my PhD, I worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Prof. Keiko Sugimoto at RIKEN in Yokohama,where I focused on the function of the Anaphase promoting complex/cyclosome (APC/C). Then I had the great opportunity to work with Prof. Arp Schnittger at Hamburg University, Germany, where I worked on the Spindle assembly checkpoint (SAC) bringing together my past interests in APC/C and microtubule regulation. Currently, I am an assistant professor starting my own research theme addressing the dynamics and plasticity of plant genomes, especially during whole-genome duplication (WGD). Although WGD is considered a driving force in plant evolution, it is still unclear why and how WGD frequently occurs in plant lineages. One possible explanation, which I am focusing on, is a plant-specific regulation of the SAC.