Transgenic Ascidians

Yasunori Sasakura started his research career in Dr. Noriyuki Satoh’s laboratory in 1996. His Ph.D. thesis was about the localization of mRNAs in eggs of the ascidian Halocynthia roretzi. He then focused on developing the genetic approaches in the ascidian Ciona intestinalis. The reason is that he thought that genetics would be necessary to elucidate molecular mechanisms of maternally stored substances. He introduced transposon-mediated germ cell transgenesis and mutagenesis in this ascidian. From then on he brought many technical innovations in the study of Ciona with transgenic techniques. For example, his group has introduced transgenesis-mediated tissue/cell tracing with the photoconvertible protein Kaede, transposon-based specific knockdown of maternally transcribed RNAs, the optogenetic approach to understand neuronal functions, and genome editing techniques in Ciona with TALENs and CRISPR/Cas9.