Masami Watanabe

I graduated Meiji University and obtained Ph.D. at The University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Agriculture. A present research interest is understanding Totipotency of plant cells. Plant cells have inherent ability to regenerate from a single cell to the whole plant. However, plant cells can not always accomplish regeneration, but die during the culture. I found that this dying process was caused by apoptotic cell death. I am analyzing the mechanisms of execution of the apoptotic cell death.
Application of plant cell technology to crop improvement is another research goal. If a plant cell can effectively regenerate a whole plant, we will save time, space and money to produce many useful transgenic plants.