Message from head Staff & Member Access Rare sugar research Aim Basic Research Mass Production Application Research International Society of Rare Sugars (ISRS) Mail to the office Kagawa University home Top page

KAGAWA UNIVERSITY RARE SUGAR RESEARCH CENTER MIKI-CHO, JAPAN 7610795 New life science is created from rare sugar research The 21st century will also be called "century of life science", and molecular biology and protein engineering are advanced all over the world now. If it is called "sugar" in such post-genome research, oligosaccharide research occupies the mainstream. In Kagawa University, research is advanced about those functions (physiology activity) paying attention to the rare sugar. And creation of new sugar life science (life science) is aimed. Rare sugar research is promoted in Kagawa University, cooperating with a research organization and a company centering on a Kagawa prefecture. As it is indicated in the above figure as rare sugar, it is defined as the monosaccharide (the functional minimum unit of sugar) which exists only in very small quantity in a nature. There are many kinds of monosaccharide. What is shown with a big green circle is the monosaccharide (seven kinds, such as glucose and fructose) which exists in a nature so much. Rare sugar is expressed with the circle of the small pink of a granule. Although rare sugar exists in a nature only at very small quantity, there are many kinds conversely (about 50 kinds). Almost all the things of these rare sugars were not marketed, and even if carried out, since it was very expensive, supply of a quantity required for research was difficult for them. Such rare sugar is produced from the monosaccharide which exists in a nature so much, and the project which solves the function and connects the result with industrialization is progressing in Kagawa Prefecture. An organic matter is made from an inorganic substance in the process of evolution, and it is further connected to birth of a living thing. Usually, the organic matter (amino acid, monosaccharide, nucletode) of a low molecule serves as a composition ingredient of the organic matter (protein, many sugar, DNA) of a polymer. It was thought that the low molecule organic matter containing single sugar did not usually have a function (physiology activity). Even if it was known whether monosaccharide serves as an energy source and that it will become the basis of sweet taste, the work beyond it had a belief that there was nothing. We started the research which overthrows such a belief and have got the result in which a thought does not come together, either.