Understanding the mysteries of diverse “shape-making” mechanisms

　Living organisms adapt to their environment by evolving their shapes and forms in a wide variety of ways. Through various studies to date, considerable progress has been made in understanding the mechanisms by which the properties of each cell are determined during the developmental process of "shape" formation. However, how the final "shape" is achieved after cell properties have been determined is still largely unknown.

　Insects, with more than one million species and an outstanding diversity of "shapes," are ideal organisms for studying the mechanisms of "shape-making." A fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, is one of the excellent model organisms because the activity of any gene can be changed in any cell at any time, as much as you like, and has tools to visualize the expression and localization of various genes and proteins in real-time while alive.

　In our laboratory, we are mainly focusing on the analysis of Drosophila with an evolutionary perspective on the differences from other insects, and are trying to understand "how the 'shape' is formed," "how the 'shape' differs," and "how the 'shape' evolves."