The 18th Sapporo Symposium on Biological Rhythm
August 14, 2021

Abstracts

On line Conference
Zoom Meetinghttps://zoom.us/j/99022291771?pwd=TmtjdEVYaUF2TFNESEFRVzRTZmRCZz09

Meeting ID: 990 2229 1771
Passcode: 489653

Aschoff and Honma Memorial Foundation
Sapporo Japan

Greeting from the chair

Ken-ichi Honma
President of the Aschoff and Honma Memorial Foundation
Welcome to the 18th Sapporo Symposium on Biological Rhythm (SSBR) in 2021. I am
happy to tell you that we were able to organize the awarding lecture and memorial
symposium in this time and show them worldwide on line. The symposium should havebeen held in 2020, one year back. But because of the pandemic of Covid-19, we had topostpone the symposium. However, the pandemic is not yet subsided and we should
again postpone the large part of symposium to 2022. Since the 2nd SSBR, thesymposium was highlighted by the awarding of Aschoff and Honma Prize for Biological
Rhythm Research and the winner’s lecture. The prize winner this year is Dr. Takashi
Yoshimura in the Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules (WPI-ITbM), Graduate
School of Bioagricultural Sciences, Nagoya University. He has been contributing to ourunderstanding of the mechanism of seasonality in physiology and behavior of animals.
This time, 16 scientists were nominated and the international selection committee (CarlJohnson, chair) recommended the top two to the council of AHM foundation. The council
was unanimous for Dr. Yoshimura.
The topic of the memorial symposium is usually determined in accordance with thewinner’s research area, namely seasonality. Four speakers are invited. Dr. Tomoko
Yoshikawa will focus on the coupling of E and M oscillators which are involved in theseasonal changes in activity time of mice. Dr. Motomu Endo will report the molecularmechanism of photoperiodic induction of flowering in Arabidopsis. Dr. Yoshifumi
Yamaguchi will talk about the hibernation of hamster and the mechanism of resistanceto col by the liver. Finally, Dr. Barbara Helm will show us how the migratory bird
recognizes the complex environment and organizes multiple rhythms in the body. I do
hope you enjoy the symposium which may have an impact upon your research.

Program
August 14 (Sat) 2021

Aschoff and Honma Prize for Biological Rhythm ResearchAwarding (online)
13:30 Awarding Address by Ken-ichi Honma (President of AHM Foundation)
13:15 Winner’s Lecture
Takashi Yoshimura (Professor of Nagoya University)‘Towards understanding molecular mechanisms of infradian rhythms’
14:15
Laudation by Yoshitaka Fukada (President of JSC)

Memorial Symposium ‘Circadian Clock and Seasonality’ (online)
Chairpersons:Shizufumi Ebihara (Professor emeritus, Nagoya University)
Sato Honma (Chief Director of Sleep Center, Sapporo Hanazono Hospital)
14:30 Tomoko Yoshikawa (Organization for International Education and Exchange, University ofToyama)
CaMKIIα is involved in the coupling of the evening and morning circadian oscillatorsin mice
15:15 Motomu Endo (Nara Institute of Science and Technology)
Time to update the external coincidence model in Arabidopsis
16:00 Intermission
16:10 Yoshifumi Yamaguchi (Hokkaido University Institute of Low Temperature Science)
Diet- and hibernation season- dependent enhancement of hepatic cold resistance in a
mammalian hibernator Syrian hamster
16:55 Barbara Helm (Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences, University ofGroningen, Netherlands)
Organizing complex seasonality: bird migration gives clues
17: 45 Closing Address by Dr. Ken-ichi Honma

The Prize Winner in 2020

―Dr. Takashi Yoshimura

Dr. Takashi Yoshimura was born in 1970 at Shige, Japan. He graduated from
Nagoya University Faculty of Agriculture in 1993 and took his Ph.D. degree in 1996
at Nagoya University Graduate School of Agricultural Science (supervisor,Professor Shizufumi Ebihara). The title of his Ph.D. thesis was ‘Studies on themammalian circadian photoreceptors’. In 2005 he became Associate Professor at
Nagoya University and in 2008 promoted to Professor and the Director of Avian
Bioscience Research Center. In 2013, he became Professor at the Institute ofTransformative Bio-Molecules (WPI-ITbM) and Graduate School of BioagriculturalSciences, Nagoya University.
He started his scientific carrier with studies of the circadian photosensitivity inretinally degenerate mice (J Comp Physiol, 1996) and extended it to the molecularanalysis of avian circadian clock genes (Mol Brain Res, 2000). Meanwhile, hediscovered the suprachiasmatic nucleus in birds (Am J Physiol, 2001). Of mostimportant, he found the light-induced hormone conversion of T4 to T3 critical for thephotoperiodic response of gonads in birds (Nature, 2003) and thyrotropin in the pars
tuberalis a factor triggering photoperiodic response (Nature, 2008). He also fundthat a photoreceptor opsin is located in a deep brain in birds (PNAS, 2010) and thatthe saccus vasculosus of fish is a sensor of seasonal changes in day length (NatComm, 2013). More recently, Dr. Yoshimura discovered that the seasonal changes incolor perception of Japanese Medaka fish were regulated by dynamic plasticity inphototransduction (Nat Comm, 2017) and that self-protecting behaviors of the fish
during breeding were modulated by IncRNA LDAIR (Nat Ecol Evol, 2019). Thus, Dr.
Yoshimura has greatly contributed to our understandings of seasonality in theanimal kingdom.