Universities and Research Institutes

Abstract

There has been a broad expansion of biotechnology research in Japan, both in public and industry laboratories. The principal reason for this effort is that biotechnology is considered a ‘forcing technology,’ one that compels a country to develop a series of interlocking technologies in order to gain supremacy in a number of industrial sectors. One interesting aspect of Japanese basic research in the biological sciences is that it is conducted in a number of distinctive institutions which include:

• national universities, e.g., Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto universities;

• government laboratories, e.g., Institute of Agrobiology (MAFF), RIKEN (STA);

• research institutes funded by local governments, e.g., Osaka Biosciences Institute;

• private institutes with joint government-industry support, e.g., Protein Engineering Research Institute;

• private institutes funded by industry: either by induvidual companies e.g., Suntory, Hayashibara; or by a group of companies, e.g., Sagami Research Institute.