Furutani-Seiki started his career in 1989, as an assistant professor in Tomio Tada's lab in the Department of Immunology at the University of Tokyo where he investigated the complement factor B for HIV infection. In1992, he participated in the first large-scale mutagenesis screen for mutations affecting embryonic development as a postdoc in Janni Nusslein-Volhard's lab at Max-Planck-Institute in Tübingen. In 1997, he moved to Freiburg University as a group leader to analyze anterior posterior patterning of zebrafish nervous system and envisaged that a mutagenesis screening in medaka fish could identify new phenotypes that could not be identified in the zebrafish mutant screeing. In 2000, he started the first genome-wide mutagenesis screen using medaka fish as a group leader of the Kondoh Differentiation Signalling ERATO project in Kyoto, Japan.[9][10][8] A third of the phenotype identified in the Kyoto medaka screening were not seen in the zebrafish Tübingen screening.
Furutani-Seiki research study investigates the molecular mechanisms of mechono-homeostasis in which extracellular mechanical cues are integrated with cell differentiation and proliferation to maintain tissue, organ and body form.[12]
As part of his contribution to the field of Science, Furutani-Seiki discovered a single gene whose product is essential for the body and organs to keep their 3D shape and withstand external forces such as gravity.[13] The gene was discovered through the analysis of a medaka fish mutant with a unique flattened phenotype which was identified by the combination of the mutagenesis screen in zebrafish with another screen in medaka fish.[14] His work further investigates the single cell lineage and regionalisation of cell populations during medaka neurulation.[13][15]
Furutani-Seiki led an international team of researchers from the University of Bath, UK Centre for Regenerative Medicine that identified a gene that helps the body resist gravity and demonstrated what happens when the system goes wrong.[16] As of June 2018[update], he held a visiting professorship in Bath's Department of Biology and Biochemistry.[2]
Porazinski, Sean R.; Wang, Huijia; Furutani-Seiki, Makoto (2011). "Essential Techniques for Introducing Medaka to a Zebrafish Laboratory—Towards the Combined Use of Medaka and Zebrafish for Further Genetic Dissection of the Function of the Vertebrate Genome". Vertebrate Embryogenesis. Methods in Molecular Biology. Vol. 770. pp. 211–241. doi:10.1007/978-1-61779-210-6_8. ISBN978-1-61779-209-0. ISSN1940-6029. PMID21805266.
