MIMS Spotlight Series: Meet Takahiro Ishizaki
Text written by Nóra Lehotai and Takahiro Ishizaki. Pictures owned by Takahiro Ishizaki.
I had a chat with Takahiro, a postdoctoral fellow in the Bushell group. He joined MIMS in May 2021, leaving behind his parents and girlfriend in Japan for a while.
Can you tell us about your role at MIMS, what are you working on now?
I am working as a postdoc in Ellen Bushell’s group thanks to a 2-year scholarship from Japan. This type of scholarship is to encourage Japanese postdocs to go abroad, covering both travel fees and my salary.
The Bushell group is focusing mainly on the host-pathogen interaction of the malaria parasite. I have a molecular biology background and I characterized the signalling proteins of the parasite, both in the erythrocyte invasion, using genetic modification approaches like CRISPR/Cas9 and inducible knock-outs, and also the time-lapse live imaging analysis. Here in Umeå, I expand the experiment scale using the PlasmoGEM knock-out library and determine the parasite signalling proteins associated with the sensing of the host environmental conditions. I am also trying to establish and optimize the conditional knock-out method, which could be applied to the large-scale experiments.
Picture: Takahiro Ishizaki.