Spotlight Noriyuki Suetsugu
Our spotlight this month features Dr Noriyuki Suetsugu, working in the lab of Professor John Christie. Noriyuki visits us from Kyoto University, Japan and writes of his research and experience of living in Glasgow:
'My name is Noriyuki Suetsugu and I came to Glasgow in November 2016 from Kyoto University in Japan thanks to a research fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (for the Promotion of Joint International Research) to carry out collaborative work with Prof. John Christie centred on understanding the molecular mechanisms associated with plant photoreceptor signaling.
Our group studies plant blue-light receptor kinases known as the phototropins. These photoreceptors function to regulate various blue light responses that facilitate photosynthetic performance in plants, including phototropism, chloroplast movement, stomatal opening, and leaf development (flattening, positioning, and palisade cell elongation). My research is focused on unraveling the molecular mechanisms underlying chloroplast movements. I have studied light-driven chloroplast movements for almost 20 years since I was an undergraduate student in the laboratory of Prof. Masamitsu Wada at Tokyo Metolopolitan University. Chloroplasts can move to weakly irradiated areas within cells to capture light more efficiently (known as the accumulation response). Conversely, they can move away from areas of intense light to avoid photodamage (known as the avoidance response).
As already mentioned, phototropins regulate chloroplast movements but how they do this is not well understood. Two proteins known as NPH3 and RPT2 have been identified as phototropin-interacting proteins and have been shown to regulate phototropism, leaf positioning and flattening in Arabidopsis. My research has shown that RPT2 and a related protein called NCH1 overlap in function to regulate the chloroplast accumulation response. I am now very interested in understanding how NCH1 and RPT2 work at the biochemical/molecular level. Moreover, NCH1, RPT2 and NPH3 are part of a large gene family in plants and dissecting the functions of all these proteins represents a major challenge. This is the main reason why I came to Glasgow to work with John and tackle this.
I first met John almost 20 years ago when he visited Japan as a postdoctoral researcher to perform experiments with Prof. Wada’s group at Tokyo Metropolitan University. I was an undergraduate student at that time and he had just demonstrated that phototropin was a blue-light receptor kinase for phototropism together with Prof. Winslow Briggs lab at Stanford (reported in Science). During his stay, John and I enjoyed playing football. I remember when he left, I asked him to sign a reprint of his Science paper (I have a vague memory that he included a message saying “Keep on playing football!”). While John continued to push foward on phototropin research in terms of its photochemistry and biochemistry, we in Japan showed that the phototropins were also photoreceptors for chloroplast movement and stomatal opening (in collaboration with Prof. Ken-ichiro Shimazaki’s group). So, John and I maintained a good relationship and in 2012 he visited Prof. Wada’s and Prof. Shimazaki’s groups again at Kyushu University, where we enjoyed sightseeing, Japanese hot springs “onsen” in addition to talking research. That was the last time I met John, so I was very happy to come to Glasgow to continue our work.
This is the first time I have lived abroad for more than 1 month. I am still struggling with speaking English but I am improving a little bit! My colleagues are always helping me though and encouraging me both personally and professionally. Everyone has been so friendly. Thanks to them, I have enjoyed playing football again (although I haven’t persuaded John to play!) and regularly visit the Stevenson building which is a great gym. I have been introduced to new good foods and drinks, as well as interesting parties! I really enjoy the variety of beers that are available here and I have become very fond of fish and chips, as well as haggis, shortbread, Tunnock’s caramel wafers and, of course IRN-BRU although I often have a similar one, “Iron Brew”. These are really mysterious drinks for me!
I am now looking forward to further enjoying research and life in Glasgow over the summer. I am excited to study in Bower Building, because it has housed many outstanding researchers studying light signaling, stomatal physiology and circadian biology. This has been a really good opportunity for me and given chance to interact with a wide variety of researchers in IMCSB.
I have recently joined the laboratory of Prof. Takayuki Kohchi at Kyoto University who has contributed to developing the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha as a model experimental system to understand aspects of land plant evolution. I am also using Marchantia as well as Arabidopsis in my research to unravel the function and evolutionary conservation of the RPT2/NCH1 subfamily in land plants. Marchantia research is growing in UK as well as Japan and I will be very happy if I can promote the use of Marchantia while I am here so that it too becomes a popular model system for plant science at Glasgow!'
