First person – Chieko Ikoma and Kodai Inoue

ABSTRACT First Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Journal of Cell Science, helping researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Chieko Ikoma and Kodai Inoue are co-first authors on ‘ Improved transfection methods for observation of cytoskeletal structures in primary cultured astrocytes’, published in JCS. Chieko conducted the research described in this article as a master's degree student in the lab of Asako G. Terasaki at the Department of Biology, Chiba University, Japan, and is now working in the pharmaceutical industry. Kodai is a PhD candidate in the lab of Asako G. Terasaki, investigating how proteins regulate astrocyte morphogenesis.