Yutaka Yoshida
- PhD University of Tokyo 1999
- BS Keio University 1994
Dr. Yoshida was initially trained in Dr. Tadashi Yamamoto’s lab at University of Tokyo as a PhD student, and he particularly learned molecular biology and mouse genetics. In Dr. Yamamoto’s lab, Dr. Yoshida demonstrated that Tob protein suppresses BMP signaling-induced bone formation by interacting with Smad proteins (Yoshida et al., 2000, Cell). He also showed that Tob is a tumor suppressor gene product by showing that tob-deficient mice are predisposed to cancer (Yoshida et al., 2003, Genes & Dev).
After Dr. Yoshida received his PhD degree, he became interested in developmental neuroscience, and joined Dr. Thomas Jessell’s lab at Columbia University / HHMI. In Dr. Jessell lab, Dr. Yoshida studied monosynaptic sensory-motor circuits in the spinal cord. In those circuits, selective monosynaptic connections between proprioceptive sensory neurons in the dorsal root ganglia and motor neurons are formed in the ventral spinal cord. Dr. Yoshida found that plexinA1 and plexinD1 are expressed by all or a subset of proprioceptive sensory neurons in the dorsal root ganglia, and further found that semaphorin6C/6D and semaphorin3E are ligands of plexinA1 and plexinD1, respectively. To further understand functions of plexinA1 and plexinD1 in mice, Dr. Yoshida generated plexinA1- and plexinD1-null and conditional mutant mice. Then, Dr. Yoshida showed that plexinA1 controls axon positioning of proprioceptive sensory neurons by interacting with its ligand, semaphorin6D. These studies were published in Science (Gu* and Yoshida* et al., 2005), Neuron (Yoshida et al., 2006), and Nature (Pecho-Vrieseling., et al., 2009) by collaborating with several groups including Drs. Alex Kolodkin, David Ginty, and Silvia Arber.
In 2008, Dr. Yoshida started his own lab in division of Developmental Biology at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center where he continued to work on monosynaptic sensory-motor circuits. In addition, Dr. Yoshida started studying other motor circuits such as corticospinal circuits. Dr. Yoshida is also interested in promoting regeneration of motor circuits after spinal cord injury. In 2018, Dr. Yoshida moved to Burke Neurological Institute / Well Cornell Medicine in NY.
Dr. Yoshida has been an adjunct professor at OIST since 2018 where he is interested in further understanding motor circuits by interacting with outstanding neuroscientists at OIST.
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