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Fourth report of “Molecular Strategy” at Kyoto University

2017.08.02

On July 29^th and 30^th, I visited Kyoto University Katsura Campus to participate in a report meeting of the new academic field “Middle Molecular Strategy Leaded by Reaction Integration: Creation of Higher Functional Biomolecules“.

Click here for program.

In the morning, I had an abstract meeting in my laboratory so I’ve arrived a bit late. It is my third time in Katsura campus and it is a bit far from Waseda University. There is one young researcher who came on my behalf and I was glad he came.

The program was about result report meeting and I do not have to do any lecture but I was there to listened to about 5 lectures and after that is social gathering. After that, we had a second drinking party with Osaka University, Iwasaki-san, Osaka City, Daifukuyama-san and Atobe sensei.

I didn’t plan my accommodation so I didn’t have a room but I managed to get a room (surprisingly, that day was vacant and cheap). I went back to the hotel and took a bath and prepare my presentation for tomorrow.

The next day, I presented my project which is “Control of plant biological clocks by synthetic prize molecules” as shown below. At first, I did not plan to talk about this theme only so I talked about many other topics and explain about other contents.

Why put “small molecule” in “middle molecule” when it is actually just “middle molecule”?

The reason is that a compound library is necessary because the beginning of this chemistry begins with random screening. And the compound library has only a molecular weight of 500 or less according to Lipinsky’s law. Therefore, the candidate compound will inevitably become a “small molecule”. Everyone must have thought and wanted the “middle molecule” that were made already. Unfortunately, this is not the case and will not be formed well and might be dissed by others.

It was a good opportunity because I had only talked about the outline so far. Thanks to Prof. Nakamichi (Nagoya University) for this research and collaborators. In Waseda, two 4th grade students are currently researching on this theme. We are planning to have another two people involved next year.