Yuichiro Tsuchiya

Designated Professor

Chemical biology in plants
The goal of my research is to save African farmers from a parasitic plant Striga hermonthica that has been causing a huge problem to the crop production in Africa. The damage caused by the single species is devastating, as 10 billion USD worth of crops have been lost every year from the African continent and 300 million people's lives have been affected. I have been studying the mechanism on how Striga identifies the presence of host plants and am utilizing the information to develop small molecules to destroy the host-parasite communication. Using chemical genetics, I am trying to elucidate the signaling mechanism of strigolactones (SLs), which are released from the host root and stimulate Striga seed germination.

Profile

1997B.A.; Hokkaido University (Agriculture)
1999M.Sc.; Hokkaido University (Agriculture)
2002Ph.D.; Hokkaido University (Agriculture)
2002-2006Postdoctoral Fellow; Department of Botany, University of Toronto, Canada
2006-2009Special Postdoctoral Researcher; Riken Plant Science Center, Japan
2009-2013Postdoctoral Fellow; Department of Cell & Systems Biology, University of Toronto, Canada
2013-2014ALCA Postdoctoral Fellow; Division of Biological Science, Graduate School of Science, Nagoya University
2014-2015Postdoctoral Fellow; WPI-ITbM, Nagoya University
2015-2021Designated Associate Professor; WPI-ITbM, Nagoya University
2021-presentDesignated Professor; WPI-ITbM, Nagoya University