Masamitsu Wada

Biography

Masamitsu Wada was born on 20.08.1941, in Tokyo, Japan. He studied biology from 1963 to 1971 at the Botany Department of the University of Tokyo as an undergraduate and graduate student. In 1972 he obtained his doctorate of science (Dr. Sc) with experimental works on the photocontrol of the direction of cell division in remote gametophytes. From 1971-1981 he was an assistant professor of the Botany Department, University of Tokyo under Prof. Masaki Furuya. In 1981 he was appointed as an associate professor of Biology Department, Tokyo Metropolitan University, and promoted to a full professor in 1989. Since 1999 he has held an appointment as adjunctive professor at the National Institute of Basic Biology at Okazaki. On leaving the Tokyo Metropolitan University in 2005, he became a professor of the National Institute for Basic Biology until 2008. He is now a professor at Kyushu University.

Research Interest

The scientific focus of Masamitsu Wada is the analysis of the mechanisms of photomorphogenesis in green plants, including moss, fern and seed plants. In particular, Masamitsu Wada is interested in the signal transduction pathways and the mechanism of photorelocation of chloroplasts in the question how chloroplasts receive the light signal and move. To address this question, he concentrates on the actin filaments of chloroplasts and the plasma membrane.