Takao Kondō

was a Japanese biologist and professor of biological science at Nagoya University in Nagoya, Japan. He is best known for reconstituting the circadian clock in vitro.

Biography Kondo was born in 1948 in Kariya, Aichi, Japan, and received his B.S. in 1970 and his Ph.D. in Biology in 1977 from Nagoya University. He was appointed an assistant professor at the National Institute for Basic Biology in Okazaki, Aichi, Japan in 1978. Kondo served as Dean of the School of Science from 2006 to 2009 and President of the Institute for Advanced Research of Nagoya University from 2007 to 2013. Kondo held the title of Designated Professor and Professor Emeritus of Nagoya University. Kondo died from pneumonia on 16 November 2023, at the age of 75.

Research Kondo was best known for his discoveries surrounding the molecular basis of the cyanobacteria circadian clock. Prior to Kondo's work in the late 1980s, controversy surrounding the existence of a biological clock in bacteria. Since bacteria divide rapidly and several times per day, it was thought that there was no necessity to evolve a biological clock in bacteria. Promoter-trap and microarray analysis performed by Kondo in the cyanobacteria Synechococcus revealed that many, if not all, genes displayed a rhythmic, circadian component to their expression. In 2002, Kondo demonstrated that kaiA-stimulated kaiC phosphorylation is necessary for circadian timing loops in cyanobacteria. Kondo's seminal 2005 discovery was the first example of a recapitulated biological rhythm in a test tube, mimicked rhythms observed in eukaryotic cells, and disproved the universal necessity of the transcription-translation autoregulatory feedback loop.

Honors 1980: American Society for Plant Physiologist 1990–20??: Society of Research on Biological Rhythms 2019: Person of Cultural Merit