Research Director: Yukishige ITO
(Chief Scientist, RIKEN Advanced Science Institute)
Research Term: 2009-2014

In eukaryotic organisms including humans, a wide variety of glycoproteins exist, which are deeply involved in various biological phenomena. For example the involvement of protein stability and structure, cell recognition, cell differentiation, cancer, signal transduction, immune response, microbial infection, and sugar chain is well known. As a number of diseases associated with incomplete folding of proteins are known, clarifying how sugar chains contribute to three-dimensional structure of the protein is important. In this project, multi-disciplinary study was conducted based on organic synthesis, was conducted to address this issue.