Recognizing Plant Physiology First Author: Chikako Kuwabara

Recognizing Chikako Kuwabara, first author of:  A model system for studying plant-microbe interactions under snow

Current position: Postdoctoral fellow at Graduate school of Agriculture, Hokkaido University, Japan

Education: Ph.D. in Bioscience from Hokkaido University

Non-scientific Interests: cooking, skiing, listening to music

Brief Bio: When I was a graduate student of Dr. Seizo Fujikawa’s lab at the Institute of Low Temperature Science, Hokkaido University, I was fascinated by how overwintering plants survive in cold climates. My graduate study was focused on apoplastic proteins that are involved in cold or disease resistance in winter wheat. The work was continued during my first postdoc at AIST, Sapporo. In 2007, I joined Dr. Ryozo Imai’s lab at Hokkaido Agriculture Research Center, NARO and started working with Arabidopsis to dissect molecular mechanisms of cold-induced snow mold resistance. I also studied about supercooling-promoting substances that are involved in deep supercooling of xylem parenchyma cells in tree plants at the Woody Plant Biology lab of Hokkaido University.  Currently I am working on soybean genome editing with Dr. Tetsuya Yamada at Hokkaido University.