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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

This year’s Halocynthia roretzi season for research in Asamushi is over. All the remaining individuals in the aquarium tank were dissected to collect the tunics, which are going to be sent to someone in Shizuoka University for cellulose extraction. We will see them again in the next November.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Found a place near the main campus in Sendai (about 400 km away from the marine station) who serves cold ramen with slices of Halocynthia roretzi only in summer.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

The course ended successfully today thanks to Daphne-san’s and Sebastien’s great efforts and leadership and to staff members’ generous assistances throughout the course. We are able to tell how excited the students also were from their performances in their presentations and the wrap-up party.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

On day 3 of the marine biology course, Dr. Sebastien Darras from Banyuls Marine Station, France, is teaching a course of developmental biology of ascidians. Good to see students working hard to dissect adults and collect eggs and sperm for fertilization from many different kinds of ascidian species.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

We are hosting an international marine biology course here in Asamushi. On day two today, Dr. Daphne Munroe from Rutgers University, USA, is teaching students from many countries in Asia and Europe an introductory coastal ecology course.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 10/01/2026

We are hosting a marine biology course for high school students during this weekend. They are trying to make twins of ascidians by isolating blastomeres of the two cell stage embryos under microscopes.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

A PhD student, Huang, and Kumano went to a research workshop “Emerging Model Systems: From Unicellular Holozoans to Non-Bilaterians” held in NIBB, Okazaki. Huang presented his research for the first time on tentacle branch formation in the jellyfish Cladonema pacificum by FGF signaling.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

A prospective graduate student Haga-san, who will start next spring, visited the lab and attended our progress report and journal club. We had a welcome dinner in the city center of Aomori.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

We went to purchase noon type ascidians from a fisherman in Sanriku coast. We stayed one night in Onagawa Field Center in Tohoku Univ., went to the Karakuwa fishing port next morning, where farming of Halocynthia roretzi started originally, and came back with more than 300 of them in Asamushi.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 06/11/2025

We went to the Harabetsu fishing port to buy morning type Halocynthia roretzi, a.k.a. White Hoya, from a local fisherman. These ascidians are farmed for several years in the sea, originating from young juveniles grown by a fisheries facility through artificial fertilization and larval attachment.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

We hosted a seminar in the station by Dr. Kei Jokura from National Institute for Basic Biology. He was talking to us about his research on the function of cilia in the comb plates and balance organs in ctenophore.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

We went out on the boat off the Kominato fishing port to collect morning type ascidians Halocynthia roretzi. Two technicians dived into the sea about 25 m deep twice each and picked more than a hundred natural individuals in total. They will be used for our research in the upcoming spawning season.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

As a part of the jellyfish workshop, we got to see the backyard of the Asamushi Aquarium. We were all excited to see how they grow and maintain many kinds of jellyfish they are exhibiting there.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

We are hosting a jellyfish workshop here in Asamushi (Oct 5-9). People from Dr. Mark Martindale’s lab in Florida, Dr. Cheryl Ames’ lab in Sendai and Kumano’s lab are gathering all together, and experiencing and discussing jellyfish and other marine animals all day long.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

A new student Lu Wang has set up the culturing system for Clytia sp. IZ-D in the lab. She is the first one in the lab to use this species for research. It is a new species recently collected off the coast of Sanriku. It has just started producing medusae so hopefully we can get gametes in ten days.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

A PhD student Yuma Miyazawa and Kumano are now in Tutzing, Germany, attending Hydra Meeting 2025. All the participants are staying within the grounds of Evangelische Akademie Tutzing, a historical education and conference center, and discussing biology of basal metazoans all day. Very good meeting.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

This is the other one developing. The movie was taken by a student.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 18/09/2025

We are hosting a marine biology course for Japanese and international students from Kyoto, Tsukuba and Sendai. On Day 3 they tried to collect eggs and sperm from three different animals, starfish, sand dollars and sea squirts on their own, and got two of them fertilized and they are now developing.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

We finally got EDOKKO 1 into the sea about 15 and 35 m deep to monitor environmental conditions for the scallop farming in Mutsu bay for the next several months in collaboration with the local government and fishermen. The fishermen and the technicians of the station did great job together.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

Kumano visited the Dr. Deguchi’s lab in Miyagi University of Education to collect cleavage-stage embryos of the jellyfish Clytia IZ-D for us to do in situ hybridization analysis. They kindly had eggs and sperm spawned, fertilized them and grew them to the stage of our interest on the spot.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 25/07/2025

Assist. Prof. Shumpei Morita attended 19th International Congress of Comparative Endocrinology held in Sendai from July 8th to 12th and presented his research on germ cell regeneration mechanisms in the ascidian Ciona robusta.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

Assistant Prof. Shumpei Morita was in Noto Marine Station, Kanazawa University, from June 26 to 28 to collect Peronella japonica for his research on germline development in sea urchins. Research with this species could give us an interesting insight into the evolution of germline development.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

Technicians Hirabayashi-san and Koyama-san dived and collected for us young ascidian individuals of H. roretzi from the sea around the Hadaka-jima island by the station. The biggest individual in the image is about 5 cm in size (about 2 years old) and the smallest 1 cm (about 1 year old).

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

Kumano is now in Suwa, attending the annual director meeting of Japan’s Marine and lake stations. They took us a tour to the Suwa Hydrobiological Station, Shinshu University, located by the Suwa lake. Very surprisingly, the station has its own hot spring, which is so amazing!

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

Asst. Prof. Shumpei Morita was in Tateyama Marine Station of Ochanomizu University for a week for his collaborative research with Prof. Kiyomoto there on germ cell regeneration in sea urchin embryos. Labeled green in the left image are primordial germ cells in a Hemicentrotus gastrula embryo.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

We are now recruiting students for April 2026 admission to the Master degree program of our Graduate School. If you are interested in studying with us in Asamushi, please visit the website below and contact us for more information and a lab tour. www.lifesci.tohoku.ac.jp/en/admission...

lifesci.tohoku.ac.jp

Examination Schedule and Application Guidelines｜Graduate School of Life Sciences Tohoku University

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

We got some adults of the ascidian Ciona savignyi with full of eggs and sperm for our research from a fisheries facility of Aomori city. While they are a useful animal for us to study biology with, they are very disliked by local fishermen as being damaging to the scallop farming in the Mutsu bay.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

A PhD student Mako Takahashi found a fused medusa of C. pacificum in one of her culturing dishes. It has two manubria (and mouths) and twelve main tentacles. It was produced in fusion during its budding off the side of a polyp, unlike a recent report on fused comb jellies by Dr. Jokura in Curr Biol.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

The manuscript entitled “Diversification of cnidarian mechanosensory neurons across life cycle phases: evidence from Hydrozoa”, which describes research done by Prof. Nakanishi from U. of Arkansas during his sabbatical stay in the station, has been accepted in Integrative and Comparative Biology.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 21/04/2025

The ascidian Halocynthia roretzi fertilized in February in the lab has grown into a juvenile about 1 mm in its size in the station’s aquarium tank.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

A new technician here Hirabayashi-san found the jellyfish Aequorea coerulescens alive near the pier of the station. It was a perfect timing because we had just heard someone from the University of Tokyo wants one living in nature. Now it is swimming in our aquarium tank.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

We hosted a research seminar by Dr. Nakayama from the University of Tokyo, who talked about the use of polarization during the courtship of the squid Doratosepion andreanum. He is visiting the station to do research in the Asamushi aquarium, only place where this particular species is kept alive.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

Another day for further training on EDOKKO 1, where each of us tried to set up the system on our own.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

EDOKKO 1, a glass-made underwater monitoring system, arrived in the station. Technicians Washio-san and Abe-san, Prof. Fujii from Onagawa Field Center and Kumano got training all day long on how to operate it. It will be placed at the bottom of the Mutsu bay for monitoring for a WPI-AIMEC project.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

We are recruiting graduate students to study in our lab. Please visit our station website at www.biology.tohoku.ac.jp/lab-www/asam... We will also have Information Session for the admission to the Graduate School in May. For more information, please visit www.lifesci.tohoku.ac.jp/en/admission...

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

They took us a tour to the super computer they are using for their earth science studies in JAMSTEC called Earth Simulator.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

Kumano is now in Yokosuka/Yokohama attending the WPI-AIMEC All Hands Meeting held at JAMSTEC, where we are sharing our research activities in this fiscal year and establishing Grand Challenges of the project. We had a group photo taken in front of their signature research vessel. wpi-aimec.jp/en/

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

and to isolate blastomeres of the 8-cell stage embryos with hand-made glass needles. The size of the eggs and embryos is approximately one fourth of one micrometer in diameter. The students are doing those manipulations patiently in a room set at 11 degree Celsius.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

Examples of what the students are doing through the stereo-microscopes in the marine biological course are to remove the vitelline membranes from the fertilized eggs of H. roretzi with tungsten needles and …

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

A one-week marine biological course is now underway in the station. Undergraduate students from Tohoku University and others are here micro-manipulating eggs and embryos of Halocynthia roretzi, an edible ascidian found in Japan and South Korea, through stereo microscopes.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

Three local high school students trying to create ascidian twins using an experimental embryological approach in the station under our supervision won the first prize of an audience award in a research presentation meeting hosted by “EGGS” program, Tohoku University, on March 8th.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

Jellyfish species that we are mainly using in the lab for our research is Cladonema pacificum. It is characterized by its branched medusa tentacles. Several different clonal lines of this species are maintained in the lab and are reared through their lifecycles in small plastic cases.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

This is how the larvacean Oikopleura dioica is maintained through generations in the lab. It is taken care of by a PhD student Yuma Miyazawa. The longest record for the successful maintenance is 36 generations. They can be collected easily from the pier inside the station.

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Kumano’s lab in Asamushi @kuma3yo.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

Medusae of Cladonema pacificum with bifurcated main tentacles: one has two first and two second tentacle branches on a bifurcated main tentacle; another two first branches but one shared second branch. See more details of how the tentacles are branched in Fujiki et al., 2019.

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