Message from president
Message from JSNAC President
Takeshi Wada: President of the Japan Society of Nucleic Acids Chemistry (JSNAC)
As the spread of the new coronavirus infection (COVID-19) continues, I am very relieved to be appointed as the second president of The Japan Society of Nucleic Acids Chemistry (JSNAC). First of all, I sincerely pray for the souls of those who died due to COVID-19. We would also like to express our deepest sympathies to the affected people and deeply thank the medical staffs for their treatment and treatment.
It can be said that the history of humankind is the history of fighting infectious diseases and natural disasters. The Spanish flu, which was a pandemic around the world about 100 years ago, has now become a seasonal flu with established cures. Although mutant strains of this new type of coronavirus are appearing one after another, therapeutic agents and preventive methods will be established sooner or later. In fact, a new drug called the mRNA vaccine, which uses a nucleic acid molecule, has been developed and approved at an astonishing speed, saving us from the predicament.
Looking at the evolutionary process of living organisms at the molecular level, it can be said that the nucleic acid molecule responsible for the essence of heredity is the evolutionary process of DNA. And there is a hypothesis that it was the virus that accelerated its evolution. As an organism evolves and becomes able to counter the virus, the virus also mutates to gain a means of countering it and expand its power. It can be said that the multi-billion years of struggle between viruses and host organisms has facilitated the evolution of both. Many genes that exist in the animal kingdom are known to be derived from viruses. Organisms may have evolved themselves by receiving genes from viruses at times.
The CRISPR/Cas9 system is used in genome editing technology, which has been actively studied in recent years. CRISPR/Cas9 was originally discovered as an adaptive immune system for foreign viruses and plasmids possessed by microorganisms. Recently approved siRNAs are double-stranded RNAs that cause RNA interference (RNAi), and the RNAi mechanism is conserved in many species, and it is believed that it has evolved as a defense mechanism against viruses. In other words, it can be said that these systems containing nucleic acid molecules have been acquired by the organism in the process of evolution in the fight against the virus.
The RNA world hypothesis that attribute the origin of life to RNA molecules is that the catalytically active RNA molecule (ribozyme) is the origin of life in the primitive Earth about 4 billion years ago. It is difficult to scientifically prove the scenario in which RNA molecules evolve over a long period of time to the birth of life, but it is a very attractive hypothesis. We are now in an era where it is possible to evolve molecules in a short time and acquire nucleic acid molecules with the desired function using the in vitro molecular evolution method (SELEX method). On the other hand, in the research using nucleic acid molecules such as the mRNA vaccine mentioned above, humans are "evolving" the nucleic acid molecules into molecules that act as medicines in the body by chemical modification. The evolution of these nucleic acid molecules is just the tip of the iceberg of "evolution of nucleic acid chemistry." I am convinced that the evolution of science for nucleic acids, which is the essence of life, will open up a bright future for humankind.
For the post-COVID-19 era, JSNAC values three basic principles of "bridging researchers around the world," "bridging different fields of specialization," and "bridging generations" through nucleic acid chemistry. I hope JSNAC will act as a bridge in these three contexts to return cutting-edge research results that meet the demands of society and the times and continue activities with the aim of encouraging excellent researchers who will lead the next generation.
Takeshi Wada
Tokyo University of Science