Rate My Professor Koichi Nakazato

Nakazato's research centers on musculoskeletal and neural tissues critical to bodily movements, including skeletal muscle, tendons, and ligaments. Key interests encompass mechanisms of muscle hypertrophy and damage from resistance training and stretch-induced contractions, neural dysfunction in muscle strains, modulation of skeletal muscle function via nutrition, influences of mechanical stimuli and extracellular matrix on cultured muscle cell differentiation, and associations between human gene polymorphisms and sports performance or injury susceptibility. He has authored numerous peer-reviewed papers, accumulating over 6,000 citations on Google Scholar. Selected publications include "Low-load bench press and push-up induce similar muscle hypertrophy and mechanical strength specific to the triceps brachii" (2017); "Monocarboxylate transporter 4 deficiency enhances high-intensity interval training-induced metabolic adaptations in skeletal muscle" (2024); "Effects of repetition duration on skeletal muscle hypertrophy in a rat model of resistance exercise" (2025); "Beta-nicotinamide mononucleotide attenuates creatine kinase release in Duchenne muscular dystrophy model rats" (2025); and "Genetic Factors of Elite Wrestling Status: A Multi-Ethnic Comparative Study" (2025). Nakazato leads funded projects from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science on skeletal muscle atrophy mechanisms and electrical stimulation interventions.