Plant somatic cells can be reprogrammed through the actions of diverse phytohormones. During reprogramming, they are transdifferentiated into various organs, including callus, which is an organ capable of acquiring pluripotency. The pluripotent callus can then be differentiated into leaves and stems possessing an apical meristem, a process called plant regeneration. Plant regeneration can be used to multiply genetically identical plants without sexual reproduction. Recently, plant regeneration has become more important because transgenic or gene-edited plants can be generated through this process. In PRL, we are studying the molecular mechanisms underlying how plant tissues change their fate and produce various new organs from a single plant cell.

As sessile organisms, plants are highly sensitive to environmental fluctuations. They rapidly recognize environmental changes and modify their growth and development to cope with surrounding conditions. Recently, global warming has detrimentally affected crop performance, resulting in yield reduction, early flowering, poor fruit quality, and other adverse outcomes. Collaboratively, PRL and CBL are finding ways to overcome crop losses caused by high temperature. In PRL, we are studying which molecular pathways are affected by high temperature. In CBL, we are developing transgenic or gene-edited plants to increase crop yield based on the fundamental knowledge found by PRL.

Although plant biomass or yield have been greatly increased through crossbreeding, further increases are almost impossible because energy distribution efficiency has reached the limits. Therefore, increasing the total energy in plants is required to further improve plant performance. Since photosynthesis is the only way for plants to acquire energy, and the photosynthetic efficiency of crops is far below the upper theoretical limit, improving photosynthesis is currently the only way to significantly increase biomass and yield. Collaboratively, PRL and CBL are studying which components need to be engineered and how to introduce efficient proteins. To achieve this, we are adopting AI-powered protein design for more efficient photosynthetic enzymes.

​CBL

Potato can develop tubers that are used as food. Therefore, maintaining elite cultivars is important for potato cultivation. In CBL, more than 50 potato cultivars have been maintained . In addition, CBL is developing novel techniques to generate virus-free seed potato more efficiently.

Vaccines have traditionally been generated thorugh recombinant protein synthesis in animal or microorganism cells, but more recently they have also been produced in plant cells. Plant cell-based vaccines are referred to as green vaccines. Green vaccines can reduce toxicity and the risk of cross-infection, which are potential side effects when vaccines are produced in animal or microorganism cells. In addition, green vaccine can be generated in large quantities very rapidly. In CBL, we are developing methods to increase the efficiency and optimize the production of green vaccines in plant cells.