Laboratory of Protein Organic Chemistry
Professor Hironobu HOJO
Associate Professor Toru KAWAKAMI
Assistant Professor Yuya ASAHINA
【Current Research Programs】
1) General studies on the development of a chemical protein synthesis methodology
2) Synthetic studies of membrane proteins
3) Structural and functional studies of membrane proteins
4) Synthetic studies of histone and their structural and functional studies
Our research goal is to develop methods that enable the synthesis of a wide variety of proteins. To realize such synthesis we are developing a chemical method such as a thioester method (Fig. 1) and a ligation method, in which a building block has an auto-activating unit (Fig. 2). Based on these basic researches, we are synthesizing membrane proteins with trans-membrane and juxta-membrane regions for structural studies (Figs 3 and 4). We are also synthesizing a chemically modified histone using developing ligation auxiliaries for extended chemical ligation (Fig. 5).
Fig. 1. The thioester method for polypeptide synthesis
Fig. 2. Polypeptide synthesis using a building block that has an auto-activating unit
Fig. 3. Synthetic peptide having trans-membrane and juxta-membrane regions for analysis of a signal transduction mechanism
Fig. 4. Our present synthetic target is a receptor having a single trans-membrane domain.
Fig. 5. Development of a synthetic methodology for modified histones