About

The Division of Biological Sciences actively promotes education programs and original researches aiming at understanding the diversity of living things on the earth, the environment in which they live, and eventually the essence of life. For those aims, we cover a broad range of biological fields including the macroscopic studies on biological events above the individuals and the microscopic studies focusing on cellular and molecular biological processes and elements. In the former field, researches on ecology, ethology, systematics, anthropology, etc. are being performed with an emphasis on the merit of fieldworks, which has been a traditional style of biological studies in Kyoto University. In the latter one, cutting-edge researches are carried out focusing on cellular structure/function, gene expression, development, neurotransmission, and molecular structure of proteins.

The Division of Biology, the original organization of the Division of Biological Sciences, has a long history since its establishment in 1919. In 1921, the Division of Biology was divided into the Department of Zoology and the Department of Botany, followed by the establishment of the Department of Biophysics in 1967. These three departments had been conducting education programs and researches independently of each other, and they were integrated together (as the Biological Science Major) at the time of reconstruction of Japanese universities in the ‘90s based on a policy with overriding priority for the graduate school. The Division of Biological Sciences now consists of four departments, ‘Zoology’, ‘Botany’, ‘Biophysics’, and ‘Primatology and Wildlife Research’.