糖質化学への出会いから素人仕事の糖鎖生物学へ

抄録

Carbohydrates are important constituents of biomolecules and natural products. In particular, glycoproteins, glycolipids, proteoglycans and cell-surface glycoconjugates are known to play various roles in biologically important phenomena. In spite of that, precise analysis of their functions has been hindered by their structural diversity and complexity. Synthetic organic chemistry is considered to be powerful in solving problems associated with their biological functions. Under such circumstances, major part of research in our group has been directed to the synthesis and functional analysis of glycoconjugate oligosaccharides of various origins. This account aims to summarize my research history in carbohydrate chemistry, which mainly covers 1) development of methodologies for oligosaccharide synthesis, 2) approaches to stereoselective glycoside bond formation, 3) synthetic studies on glycoconjugate glycan chains, and 4) analyses of glycoprotein processing and protein quality control system, and 5) studies on carbohydrate binding natural products.