Ami Takeuchi, a doctoral course student of the Department of Integrated Biosciences received 、the Special Award (the Student Category) of the 35^th Advanced Technology Award 2022 by her paper "Development of High-Efficiency Genome Editing Technology for Metabolic Engineering of Potato Starch: Strategies for Development of Useful Variants", which she wrote when she was a master's student at the Graduate School of Advanced Engineering, Tokyo University of Science. She attended the award ceremony at Meiji Kinenkan to receive the certificate of commendation on July 14, 2022.

Comment from Ami Takeuchi

I am truly honored to receive such a glorious prize, the Special Award (the Student Category) of the Advanced Technology Award. I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Hiroaki Shimada, who has always given me valuable advice, my collaborators, and the laboratory members. Encouraged by this award, I will farther devote myself to research.

The Research Topic:

"Development of High-Efficiency Genome Editing Technology for Metabolic Engineering of Potato Starch: Strategies for Development of Useful Variants"

Ami Takeuchi succeeded in breeding new variants of potatoes (Solanum tuberosum) by developing a high-efficiency genome editing technology. The potato is one of the major vegetables and the fourth largest cereal crop in the world. Improvement of quality and property of the potato starch is a big challenge but expected to make more demands for the potato. The cultivated potato has a high vegetative propagation and tetraploid genomes, due to which breeding a new variety with a new character by a conventional breeding method is unlikely to be successful. However, her newly developed genome editing technology made inducing a gene mutation possible. Therefore, she succeeded to breed new variants that have useful characters.

More details about the prize, check: the website of the organizer