Torii researches stem cell maintenance and the cell-to-cell communication required to correctly pattern tissue during development, focusing on stomatal development as a model.[2] Her work on cell-to-cell communication has also focused on the mechanisms that determine organ size and shape in plants.[3] Her achievements include discoveries of key signaling ligands, receptor kinase signaling pathways, and master regulatory transcription factors that specify stomatal patterning and differentiation.[4] Her research and collaboration ranges from cell-cell signaling in plant development to maintenance of lineage-specific stem cells, influence of extrinsic peptide and chemical signals in cell-fate decisions and patterning, and creation of an artificial ligand–receptor system to manipulate plant developmental signaling.[4] Through her works, she aims to elucidate how functional tissue patterns are generated using cross-disciplinary approaches.[3] Together with organic chemists and molecular structural theoreticians, she is developing artificial and orthogonal ligand-receptor systems with novel activities to understand and manipulate signaling pathways controlling plant development.[3]
Torii was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1965. She completed her B.S. (1987) and M.S. (1989) degrees in Biochemistry and Biophysics at the Institute of Biological Sciences at University of Tsukuba, Japan.[5] She also obtained a PhD (1993) from the University of Tsukuba, researching seed development in carrots.[6]
She became a tenure-track Assistant Professor at the Department of Biology (formerly Botany), University of Washington in 1999 and Associate Professor in 2005. Then, in 2009, she was promoted to Full Professor at Department of Biology with an affiliate faculty position at the Institute of Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, University of Washington. She was also a PRESTO researcher, Japan Science and Technology Agency, Japan (2009–2012).[7] In 2011, she received the title of College of Arts and Sciences Endowed Distinguished Professor of Biology, University of Washington (2011-2019), and has also been an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (2011–present).[2] In September 2019, she has relocated to the University of Texas at Austin, where she is a Professor of Molecular Biosciences and holds the Johnson & Johnson Centennial Chair in Plant Cell Biology.[3] She keeps her position in University of Washington as Affiliate Professor, and, since 2013, she has been an Oversea Principal Investigator and Visiting Professor at the World Premier Research Initiative, Institute of Transformative Biomolecules (WPI-ITbM), Nagoya University, Japan.[8]
She has provided extensive service on editorial and advisory boards and in editorial roles for journals, including Plant Physiology and as Editor-in-chief of The Arabidopsis Book.[4]
Ziadi, Asraa; Uchida, Naoyuki; Kato, Hiroe; Hisamatsu, Rina; Sato, Ayato; Hagihara, Shinya; Itami, Kenichiro; Torii, Keiko U. (24 August 2017). "Discovery of synthetic small molecules that enhance the number of stomata: C–H functionalization chemistry for plant biology". Chemical Communications. 53 (69): 9632–9635. doi:10.1039/C7CC04526C. PMID28809975.
