Professor Hiroshi Yamagishi

■ Area and Subject Taught: Plant Breeding Engineering
■ Research Theme(s): Elucidation of the Origin and Evolution of Crops and Development of New Crops by Means of Genome Engineering
■ Academic Degrees: Doctor of Agriculture, Kyoto University
■ Keywords for Research Field: Plant Breeding Science, Crop Origins, Plant Biotechnology

[Research Overview]

Human beings have obtained food by domesticating wild plants. Finding out how the crops grown have advanced throughout the history of cultivation can provide us with important guidelines for the development of new crop strains that will deliver increased yields in future. I am working to elucidate the origins of the cultivars of Brassicaceae , which include many important food crops-daikon radishes in particular-as well as the evolutionary mechanisms by which the varieties grown in Japan have developed. In the process, I have proven that cultivated daikon radishes have polyphyletic origins, and I received the Award of Japanese Society of Breeding in 2006 for this work. I am currently researching the genetic origins of sugukina turnip (Brassica rapa ), a specialty of Kamigamo, Kyoto. I also want to develop crops with new properties through organellar genome engineering techniques such as cell fusion and gene replacement. In particular, I have created the world's first somatic hybrids between cabbages and Arabidopsis thaliana , the first higher plant to have its genome completely decoded. This work provides useful material for the development of vegetable varieties belonging to the Brassicaceae family. Further, I am expanding the application of chloroplast recombinant DNA technology, which has been developed primarily for tobacco, and we have successfully introduced recombinant chloroplasts into petunia.

[Notable Publications and Works in the Last Three Years]

１）Yasumoto, K., Terachi, T. and Yamagishi, H. A novel Rf gene controlling fertility restoration of Ogura male sterility by RNA processing of orf138 found in Japanese wild radish and its STS markers. Genome 52 : 495-504 (2009)
２）Yamagishi, H., Terachi, T., Ozaki, A. and Ishibashi, A. Inter-and intraspecific sequence variations of the chloroplast genome in wild and cultivated Raphanus. Plant Breeding 128 : 172-177 (2009)
３）Sigeno, A., S. Hayashi, T. Terachi, H.yamagishi. Introduction of transformed chloroplasts from tobacco into petunia by asymmetric cell fusion. Plant cell Reports 28 : 1633-1640 (2009)
４）Yang, S. J., Terachi, T. and Yamagishi, H. Inhibition of chalcone synthase expression in anthers of Raphanus sativus with Ogura male sterile cytoplasm. Annals of Botany 102 : 483-489 (2008)
５）Yamagishi, H., Nakagawa, S., Kinoshita, D., Ishibashi, A. and Yamashita, Y. Somatic hybrids between Arabidopsis thaliana and cabbage (Brassica oleracea L.) with all chromosomes derived from A. thaliana and low levels of fertile seeds. J. Jap. Soc. Hort. Sci., 77 : 277-282 (2008)