During the former half of the last century the mechanism of heterogeneous catalysis had been studied, keeping the catalyst in a black box, and on the basis of the information outside of the black box, it was discussed just from mere conjectures. The author initiated a method to study directly the behavior of the working catalyst surface, looking into the inside of the black box by measuring adsorption on the working catalyst surface. In the same period many varieties of recent physical tools to study the solid surfaces have been developed and were applied to study the in situ dynamics of working catalyst surface. However, even if some chemisorbed species were observed on the working catalyst surface, it does not follow that they are reaction intermediates. A new dynamic approach to identify the dynamic behavior of each of the chemisorbed species under the reaction conditions, had been proposed by the author by use of "isotope jump method", in which labeled species are replaced during the course of reaction to study the behavior of each of the adsorbed species under the reaction conditions. By using such new techniques we could not only identify the reaction path and the rate-determining step, but also new phenomena which are called "adsorption assisted processes" were discovered, It is, accordingly, hoped that by means of new nanotechnologies recently developed to study the behavior of single molecules on solid surfaces the nature of heterogeneous catalysis should make a remarkable advances on the basis of this in situ dynamic methods. In this review article emphasis has been put in the fundamental methods of dynamic approaches.


(Communicated by Saburo NAGAKURA, M.J.A.)

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Glycans are associated with most proteins found in secretions and on the surface of mammalian cells. Glycans of secreted glycoproteins affect many protein properties such as solubility, stability, protease sensitivity, and polarity, while glycans on cell surface glycoproteins are involved in various cellular functions including cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions during embryogenesis, immune reactions, and tumor development. Recent advances in human genomic research together with newly developed and sensitive methods for the analysis of glycan structures have elucidated the etiology of a growing number of human genetic diseases with aberrant glycan formation. Among these diseases, defects of protein N-glycosylation and O-mannosylation are reviewed here. The former is relatively common and the latter is rather uncommon. Both types of defects lead to severe abnormalities, which indicate the importance of glycosylation. Sequencing of the human genome is essentially complete and now glycobiology becomes an important area of postgenomic research. Glycobiology is expected to produce remarkable advances in the understanding and treatment of certain genetic diseases.


(Communicated by Tamio YAMAKAWA, M.J.A.)

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Kushida and Kushida found that FM radio waves from stations at distances over-the-horizon are received before earthquakes. Based on this finding, since the mid-1990's, the Kushidas have been practicing "Earthquake Precursor Detection Experiment". The performance of the Kushida method during 2000-2003 has been evaluated by checking their predictions against the actual seismicity. During the period, there were 92 Kushida predictions mentioning the possibility of M ≥ 5.5 event, whereas there were 49 M ≥ 5.5 earthquakes in the Japanese region. If the criteria for successful prediction are set as: the errors in date is less than one day, epicentral position is roughly within specified area, and error in M is less than 0.5, the success rate was 20% and the alarm rate was 12%. If we relax the criteria to: the errors in dates within 10 days, epicenter within additional 100 km of specified area and the magnitude error less than 1.0, the success rate was 40% and the alarm rate was 27%. These rates may look insufficient for a practical prediction method. Considering, however, the fact that no other short-term prediction has ever been made in Japan so far it is a significant achievement. Moreover, it was found that in almost all failed predictions, meaningful signals were detected although the interpretations were incorrect. This indicates that the method is promising provided further investigation is carried out. The same evaluation at the M ≥ 6.0 level showed that the general performance was similar to the M ≥ 5.5 level, except that both success rate and alarm rate were lower at the M ≥ 6.0 level. If this unexpected finding is real, it might be inherent to the methodology using scattering of short-wave length radio waves as suggested by M. Hayakawa and may contain important information in understanding the earthquake physics and LAI-coupling. The results of the present study indicate strongly that the earthquake prediction research using anomalous transmission of VHF FM radio waves should be enhanced in parallel with complementary research in other frequency ranges.


(Contributed by Seiya UYEDA, M.J.A.)

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Using the method of Fourier transform, cryo-electron micrographs of two types of archaeal feast/famine regulatory proteins (FFRPs), pot0434017 (FL11) and pot1216151 (DM1), were analyzed. After correcting the Fourier power spectra by considering effects of the contrast transfer functions (CTFs), peaks were identified at frequencies, corresponding to the particle size of ~130 Å for FL11 in the complex with DNA, in addition, a smaller size, ~40 Å for the same protein in the absence of DNA, the particle size of ~65 Å for DM1 when interacting with a ligand, and a smaller size of ~30 Å when the ligand was removed. These numbers are consistent with our previous observations that dimers of FL11 form octamers, i.e. tetrameric assemblies of the dimers, upon intercation with DNA, and that similar octamers of a smaller FFRP, DM1 of the molecular weight approximately half that of FL11, are stabilized by interaction with the ligand. Some aspects of CTF correction are discussed.


(Communicated by Masanori OTSUKA, M.J.A.)

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