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We are studying the molecular mechanisms for mesodermal and neural development in the body axis formation of vertebrates and for the regulation of stem cells and tissue regeneration. Our goal is to clarify “how a single fertilized egg gives rise to a well-organized body during development” and “how amphibians are capable of regenerating organs and tissues after injury”. The African clawed frog Xenopus laevis and X. tropicalis are ideal model system for studying vertebrate embryogenesis/regeneration and the etiology of human genetic diseases, as frog eggs are accessible to a variety of genetic modification methods and embryological manipulations. We are particularly interested in the roles of cell signaling mediated by growth factors and downstream transcription factors. Recently, we discovered the essential roles of Zbtb14 in the formation of dorsal-ventral and anterior-posterior axes (Takebayashi-Suzuki et al., 2018), the regulation of neural development by the autism-related Clk2 (Virgirinia et al., 2019), and the importance of JunB in the initiation of cell proliferation during regeneration (Nakamura et al., 2020).

Graduate Student

Makoto Nakamura
Yuka Moriyama
Kuboe Yudai
Koike Ryota

Undegraduater Student

Takaaki Fukumoto