Yoshihiro Furukawa
Commendation
Studies on the chemical evolution of prebiotic molecules on the early Earth and in the early Solar System
A list of five major papers
- Furukawa Y., Saigusa D., Kano K., Uruno A., Saito R., Ito M., Matsumoto M., Aoki J., Yamamoto M., Nakamura T., Distributions of CHN compounds in meteorites record organic syntheses in the early solar system. Scientific Reports 13, 6683–6683 (2023).
- Sumie, Y., Sato, K., Kakegawa, T., Furukawa, Y., Boron-assisted abiotic polypeptide synthesis. Communications Chemistry 6, 89 (2023).
- Furukawa Y., Iwasa Y., Chikaraishi Y., Synthesis of 13C-enriched amino acids with 13C-depleted insoluble organic matter in a formose-type reaction in the early solar system. Science Advances 7, eabd3575 (2021)
- Furukawa Y., Chikaraishi Y., Ohkouchi N., Ogawa N.O., Glavin D.P., Dworkin J.P., Abe C., and Nakamura T., Extraterrestrial ribose and other sugars in primitive meteorites. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 116, 24440–24445 (2019).
- Furukawa Y., Sekine T., Oba M., Nakazawa H., Kakegawa T., Biomolecule formation by oceanic impacts on early Earth. Nature Geoscience 2, 62–66 (2009).
Major achievements
Dr. Yoshihiro Furukawa has made outstanding achievements in the prebiotic chemical evolution of nucleotides and peptides, the respective building blocks of RNA and proteins. He has conducted original research on the synthesis of bioorganic molecules by meteorite impacts on the early Earth and the synthesis and phosphorylation of bioorganic molecules in the presence of boron. In particular, he focused on the chemical evolution of ribose, a component of RNA. By developing his original analytical method, he discovered the presence of ribose in meteorites for the first time in the world. This achievement has led to a number of international collaborations in the analysis of soluble organic molecules in extraterrestrial materials, and he has also participated in the analysis of asteroid samples acquired by Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx, expanding his research activities to organic cosmochemistry and playing an active international role. These results consistently lead to a new model for the origin of life.
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Recommender
Takeshi Kakegawa
Supporters
Naohiko Ohkouchi, Tomoki Nakamura