Although living things consist of molecules as non-living things do, we smartly sense and judge surroundings and do the action by ourselves. It is still important topic in the present science to envisage what is special and what is not special in the molecular level for the outwardly special living things in comparison with non-living things. We think that constructing new artificial molecular systems with various information functions which are realized in the living systems will contribute to the deep understanding of the living things. This is the opposite way of the usual biology where we observe living things itself directly. In the living things, information is stored in the molecular structures or conformation of the molecular organizations. And the information is transferred among molecules via molecular interaction. On the other hand, light is a very important media for both information and energy not only in the living things and also in the daily life. Paying special attention to the above points, we design new photo-reactive molecular systems showing well-regulated molecular structural changes and study the following changes in the inter-molecular interaction, in order to actualize new photo-sensor molecular systems and light-driven molecular machines as preliminary examples of the artificial smart molecular systems.

Research Subjects
	Synthesis of light-driven molecular machine Synthetic aproach toward the mechanism and application of a motor protein, kinesin Study of photo-responsive liquid crystal Induction of molecular chirality by physical chirality

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