History

The Biotechnology Research Facilities were established in the Faculty of Agriculture, the University of Tokyo, in 1984.

From the Facilities, the Biotechnology Research Center was established in 1993 to further promote biotechnology research with two research divisions, the Laboratory for Biotechnology and the Laboratory for Structural Biology. The Center was reorganized in 2003 into three research divisions: the Laboratory of Environmental Biochemistry, the Laboratory of Cell Biotechnology, and the Laboratory of Plant Functional Biotechnology.

In 2012, two endowed courses, namely Microbial Metabolomics (Kyowa Hakko Kirin Co., Ltd.) and Creation of Energy and New Industries by Microalgae and Deep Sea Water (Takagiya Co., Ltd., etc.), were established.

All staff in the center also participate in educational courses for graduate students in the Department of Biotechnology, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences. In addition, the Center supports researchers in other departments of the University by providing advice and facilities.