In April 2023, the Human Glycome Atlas (HGA) Project was started within the framework of the Large-Scale Academic Frontier Promotion Project sponsored by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan. The HGA Project advocates for the scientific goal of “Clarifying the Truth of the Extended Central Dogma” and has four strategic segments planned to attain this goal. First, the mission of Segment 1 is to “acquire information on human glycan structures at the glycoproteome level”. Glycans are diverse and heterogeneous, and vary depending on producing cells, protein kinds, and glycosylation sites; furthermore, they are described as alterable with change in cellular status. In this segment, the actual status of glycans is explored based on comprehensive information that has been systematically acquired using a standardized approach, rather than piecemeal information acquired fragmentally and compiled individually. First, efforts are underway to elucidate the whole picture of serum and plasma glycoproteins. ...and more
Urashima gave a lecture entitled “The predominance of type 1 oligosaccharides is a feature specific to human breast milk” in May of 2011 at the first human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) glycobiology meeting held by Glycom A/S (now Royal DSM) in Copenhagen. In this lecture, he proposed that type 1 oligosaccharides are predominant in human milk based on the comparison of the chemical structures as well as profiles of oligosaccharides in human milk with those in the milks of other mammals including non-human primates, carnivora, cetartiodactyla, proboscidea, marsupials, monotremes, etc. ...and more
The oxazoline derivatives of sugars are a class of valuable and versatile intermediates in glycoscience. This article describes the historical background and chemical logic of glycoremodeling via sugar oxazoline donors. In the first part, several methods for preparation of protected sugar oxazolines as well as their applications are introduced. In the second part, the recent development of protection-free chemo-enzymatic process for synthesis of chitooligosaccharides derivatives and glycoproteins through unprotected sugar oxazoline donors is introduced based on the concept of “ aqueous direct anomeric activation”. ...and more
Commercializing second-generation bioethanol derived from cellulose is challenging due to its high crystallinity and resistance to chemical reactions. To overcome this, it is necessary to pretreat cellulose to lower its crystallinity. However, there had been no solvent that can efficiently pretreat cellulose at room temperature and pressure. This had resulted in high energy costs for cellulose pretreatment, leading to a negative energy balance for bioethanol production and consumption. ...and more
