Dr. Tetsuro Mimura Published in Science Journal “New Phytologist”

On March 22, a paper by Dr. Tetsuro Mimura, Dean of Faculty of Bioenvironmental Sciences, was published in the prestigious botany journal “New Phytologist”. This research is expected to contribute to the development of chemical compound biosynthetic technologies using plants and plant cells for anticancer drugs and to the development of research aimed at achieving a stable supply of plant-specific metabolites useful for humans.

Dean Mimura’s paper, titled “Exploring the Role of Cell Differentiation in Metabolism: Analysis of the Initiation of Alkaloid Biosynthesis during Seed Germination of Catharanthus roseus“, was a joint study between him, Mai Uzaki, a Special Postdoctoral Researcher at RIKEN, Yumi Hirai (Team Leader) and others members. The research revealed the initiation process of alkaloid [1] biosynthesis in the seed embryo [2] of the medicinal plant Catharanthus roseus [3], and showed that cell differentiation may play an important role in alkaloid metabolism.

Dean Mimura commented on this research, “As a plant that produces anticancer drugs, research on the biosynthetic mechanism of Catharanthus roseus has been carried out worldwide. This study is the first to show how this plant makes the chemicals as they grow. Now that we know how plants themselves initiate specialized metabolism, we may be able to use it for human application.”

Notes:

• [1] Alkaloid: Latin for “alkaline-like” and often basic. Although hard to define, it generally refers to small compounds that contain a nitrogen atom, excluding those that fall into other categories, such as amino acids and nucleic acids. Bioactive compounds, such as morphine and nicotine, are alkaloids that are known by many.
• [2] Seed embryo: The part of the seed that will become a plant.
• [3] Catharanthus roseus: Plant of Apocynaceae which is native to Madagascar that synthesizes and accumulates more than 300 different alkaloids. Because the alkaloids synthesized by Catharanthus roseus contain many compounds that have important roles in human life, such as vinblastine and vincristine, which are used as anticancer drugs, their biosynthetic pathways have been well studied.

(Go Urata, Public Relations Center)