Dr. Md. Nashir Uddin

Biography

Research interests: Crop nutrition (responses, transportation, use efficiency, seed filling & deposition etc.), root biology (developmental regulation), abiotic stress tolerance, and the use of advanced molecular biology techniques such as genome editing
At VSU, I work on the biological and genomic characterization of soybean seed filling at vegetable (Edamame) and mature seeds. I measure the morphological traits in the field and seed size after harvest together with seed composition (proteins, oil, sugar etc.) to unravel its genetic mechanisms. In my recent work at the University of Tokyo, I basically wanted to find the answer how plants determine their root growth direction towards higher nutrition. I endeavored to unravel the molecular mechanisms of 'nutritropisms', a phenomenon discovered in rice at my host Professor Dr. Fujiwara Toru's lab (Yamazaki et al. 2020) at the University of Tokyo, Japan. Various physiological and molecular signaling pathways are involved in tropism, and identification of genes required for nutritropism is essential. Various molecular biology and biotechnological techniques such as laser microdissection, RNA-seq analysis, candidate gene selection and confirmation, mutant generation using the CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing method, next generation sequencing, Yeast-2 hybridization, promotor GUS-staining, etc. are being used. Life: He attends various cultural festivals, and travels to various places in Tokyo and Japan.

Prior to this position, he served as an adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology at North South University. He has experience working at JIRCAS-Japan, an international organization for Agricultural Development, as an Assistant Researcher before joining NSU.
Dr. Nashir earned his Ph.D. (2016) and Masters (2012) from the School of Life and
Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Japan with a major in Plant Genetics and Breeding Science. He obtained his bachelor's degree from Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka (2008).
He has published his research work in top-ranked journals in his field, such as Frontiers in Plant Science, Field Crops Research, Plant Production Science, Breeding Science, etc., and attended many scientific conferences in the U.S.A., Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, and other countries.
Dr. Nashir is the proud recipient of the MEXT scholarship by the Government of Japan for his Masters and Ph.D. studies. His presentation was selected as "Best 10 Presentation" in the lightning round of the young researcher category at the South Asia Biosafety Conference 2019, Bangladesh. 
Plant Molecular Biology and Genetics, Plant Biotechnology, Plant Nutrition, Nutrition-stress Tolerance, Bio-fortification of nutrition, Crop variety innovation for regional development, GWAS, and genome mapping are among his primary research interests.
Dr. Nashir is an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Sustainable Crop Production and has reviewed many articles in Frontiers in Plant Science, Physiologia Plantarum, etc. He is working to develop a sustainable research collaboration between the University of Tokyo and North South University in Biology and Environmental Sciences.
*JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science)