Dr. Mitsumasa Hanaoka is an associate professor at the graduate school of horticulture, Chiba University. He graduated from Kyoto University and completed the Ph.D. program at The University of Tokyo in 2003 by the study of "Transcriptional regulation of plastid genes during chloroplast differentiation in Arabidopsis thaliana". His research specialties are plant physiology and molecular biology, and current projects are as follows: (1) Transcriptional regulation of plastid genes, (2) Molecular mechanisms of plastid differentiation, (3) Systems for environmental responses in higher plants and photosynthetic microorganisms.