Keiko Torii is a plant scientist working on stem cell maintenance and the cell-to-cell communication required to correctly pattern tissue during development, focusing on stomatal development as a model. Her work on cell-to-cell communication has also focused on the mechanisms that determine organ size and shape. In September 2019, Dr. Torii joined the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin, where she is a professor of molecular biosciences and holds the Johnson & Johnson Centennial Chair in Plant Cell Biology. She is also an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a Principal Investigator and Visiting Professor at the World Premier Research Initiative, Institute of Transformative Biomolecules, Nagoya University, Japan. Prior to joining the University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Torii was the Endowed Distinguished Professor of Biology at the University of Washington.
Early life
Dr. Torii was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1965. She completed her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Biochemistry and Biophysics at the Institute of Biological Sciences at University of Tsukuba, Japan. She also obtained a PhD from the University of Tsukuba, researching seed development in carrots.
Positions
Professor, Department of Molecular Biosciences, University of Texas at Austin. 2019-
Oversea Principal Investigator and Visiting Professor, Institute of Transformative Biomolecules, Nagoya University, Japan 2013-
Putarjunan, A., Ruble, J., Srivastava, A., Zhao, C., Rychel, A.L., Hofstetter, A.K., Tang, X., Zhu, J.K., Tama, F., *Zheng, N., and *Torii, K.U. Bipartite anchoring of SCREAM enforces stomatal initiation by coupling MAP Kinases to SPEECHLESS. Nature Plants5: 742-754 Perraki, A., DeFalco, T., Derbyshire, P., Avila, J., Sere, D., Sklenar, J., Qi, X., Stransfeld, L, Schwessigner, B., Kadota, Y., Macho, A.P., Jiang, S., Coudo, D., Torii, K.U., Menke, F.L.H., and *Zipfel, C. Phosphocode-dependent functional dichotomy of a receptor in plant signaling. Nature 561: 248-252 *Torii, K.U., Takahashi, K., Uchida, N., and Hagihara, S. Harnessing synthetic chemistry to probe and hijack auxin signaling. New Phytologist 220: 417-424 Fendrych, M., Akhmanova, M., Merrin, J., Glanc, M., Hagihara, S., Takahashi, K., Uchida, N., Torii, K.U., and *Friml. J. Rapid root growth brake by TIR1 auxin signaling. Nature Plants 4:'453-459 Han, S.K., Qi, X., K. Sugihara, Endo, T.A., Dang, J.H., Miura, T., Miller, K.A., Kim, E., and *Torii, K.U. Direct orchestration of cell-state switch and the single symmetric division to create stomata. Developmental Cell 45: 303-315 Uchida, N., Takahashi, K., Iwasaki, R., Zhang, H., Endo, T.A., Kimura, S., Yamada, R., Yoshimura, M., Tada, Y., Kinoshita, T., Itami, K., *Hagihara, S., and *Torii, K.U. Chemical hijacking of auxin signaling with an engineered auxin-TIR1 pair. Nature Chemical Biology 14: 299-305 Qi, X., and *Torii, K.U. Hormonal and environmental signals guiding stomatal development. BMC Biology 16: e21 Qi, X., Han, S.K., Dang, J.H., Garrick, J.T., Ito, M., Hofstetter, A.K., and *Torii, K.U. Autocrine regulation of stomatal differentiation potential by EPF1 and ERECTA-LIKE1 ligand-receptor signaling. eLife: e24102 Ziadi, A, Uchida, N., Kato, H., Hisamatsu, R., Sato, Y., Hagihara, S., *Itami, K., and *Torii, K.U. Synthetic small molecules that enhance the number of stomata: C-H Functionalization chemistry for plant biology. Chem Commun 53: 9632-9635 Hirakawa, Y., Shinohara, H., Matsubayashi, Y., *Torii, K.U., *Uchida, N. Cryptic bioactivity capacitated by synthetic hybrid peptide. Nature Commun 8: 14318 Tameshige, T., Okamoto, S., Lee, J.S., Aida, M., Tasaka, M., *Torii, K.U. and *Uchida, N. A Secreted Peptide and its Receptors Specifying the Auxin Response Pattern during Leaf Margin Morphogenesis. Current Biology 26: 2478-2485 Lee, J.S., Hnilova, M., Maes, M., Lin, Y.C.L., Putarjunan, A., Han, S.K., Avila, J., and *Torii, K.U. Competitive binding of antagonistic peptides fine-tunes stomatal patterning Nature 522:'439-443
