2022 LSU Gumbo - Book - Page 115
Norimoto Murai, an accomplished LSU professor and
researcher of 37 years who instilled in his students a strong
work ethic and love for science, died Nov. 20 in the hospital
after he was struck by a vehicle while biking near LSU’s
campus. He was 77.
Murai was biking on Stanford Avenue around 11 a.m. on
a Saturday morning when he was struck by a vehicle half of
a block away from his home. The driver stayed on the scene
while Murai was transported to the hospital, where he died,
according to The Advocate.
Murai was a successful professor and researcher in
LSU’s College of Agriculture, where he was awarded a total
of $2,012,342 in competitive grants, including from the
United States Department of Agriculture.
Murai was very active. At 77, he biked and worked out
at the UREC at least three times a week, and walked and
ran around the LSU Lakes six days a week since 1985, his
wife, Andreana Lisca, said.
The couple married in 1977 after meeting in Madison,
Wisconsin, where Murai attended graduate school at the
University of Wisconsin.
He completed the Boston Marathon three times, ran the
110 meter hurdle and specialized in the hammer throw on
his college’s track and field team. He was also a good skier
and graceful ice skater, skills he learned from his father in
northern Japan’s alps, Lisca said.
Murai and his wife recently became grandparents
in August and were looking forward to watching their
grandson grow.
“I joked that we would be so old or maybe not around
anymore to see him graduate high school and college,”
Lisca said. “Norimoto said that now things could be done
and we could live longer, and when I said ‘yeah right, don’t
think so,’ he said ‘you never know.’”
Murai was born on March 4, 1944, in Sapporo, Japan,
to Nobuo and Hideko Murai. He received his Bachelor of
Science and Master of Science from Hokkaido University
in 1966 and 1968, respectively.
When Murai moved to the United States, he received
a Ph.D. in botany and biochemistry at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison in 1973. As a Ph.D. candidate under
the supervision of Professor Folke Karl Skoog, Murai
studied the RNA of tobacco.
Murai shared his passion for science with his students
at LSU, incorporating them into his research as he became
one of the first biologists to genetically modify plants in
this manner. In 1998, Murai filed a patent that encoded
mutated genes within crop plants which allowed resistance
to Imidazolinone, a class of powerful herbicides that
inhibit certain enzyme production.
“Dr. Murai was a brilliant and passionate scientist,” K.
Sata Sathasivan, one of Murai’s Ph.D. students, said. “He
has been a caring advisor to his graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and staff members. He wanted the best
out of his graduate students, and he offered his best to
make them succeed.”
Sathasivan, currently an associate professor at the
University of Texas-Austin’s Department of Molecular
Biosciences, studied under Murai from 1987 to 1990 at
LSU as the professor’s second graduate student.
Sathasivan recalls that Murai helped guide his career as
a positive role model, instilling a “passion to teach” that
would follow him even 30 years after graduating.
“Seeing the students’ success as your success was a
very important lesson I learned from him,” Sathasivan
explained. “He treated his students like tough parents who
love their children. Every semester, he would have the
students clean the lab thoroughly, and then take them all
for a delicious pizza party.”
Murai was also committed to seeing projects through to
completion, Sathasivan said. He recalls a time when Murai
took a second project away from him and didn’t let him
work on it again until he completed his first one.
“He was a role model for being disciplined and
organized, working hard with laser-sharp focus, bringing
projects to completion, conducting research with rigor,
and getting the research findings published on time,”
Sathasivan said.
Jeffery Hoy, a senior professor of agriculture and
natural resource management, did not work with Murai
professionally, but were close friends outside of work. Hoy
recalled Murai’s frequent bike rides around the LSU lakes,
a low stakes poker group the two were a part of and his
contributions to work functions.
“He liked to cook,” Hoy said. “We’d have these social
events and he would always cook something and bring it
when all our families got together.”
Following postdoctoral work at the University of
Wisconsin, Murai returned to Japan as a tenured faculty
appointment in plant molecular biology at the National
Institute of Agrobiological Resources in Tsukuba for two
years.
From 1985 to 1991, Murai was a tenured associate
professor in the Department of Plant Pathology and Crop
Physiology at LSU, where he held a full position as a
professor starting in 1991 until his death.
Murai held membership in multiple professional
organizations throughout his tenure studying the
molecular biology of plants, including the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, the American
Society Plant Physiologists and the International Society
Plant Molecular Biology.
Murai is survived by his wife, son, Naoki, and a
grandchild born in August.
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