Hiroaki Suga works in the interdisciplinary field of Chemical Biotechnology at the University of Tokyo, Japan.

What inspired you to become a scientist? 

I wanted to be an individual who could keep working on something creative and original; being a scientist enables me to do this.

What was your motivation behind the work described in your ChemComm article? 

Naturally occurring peptides have unique structures relying on special chemical transformations catalyzed by enzymes. Because such enzymes generally have specificity to particular peptide sequences, they could not be versatile to prepare designer peptides. In our article, we described a new strategy to synthesize methyllanthionine-containing peptides, of which structures were found in lantibiotics, using the wPURE and flexizyme systems. The key inventions are (1) incorporation of vinylglycine into peptide chain by the genetic code reprogramming, (2) heat-induced isomerization from vinylglycine to dehydrobutyrine in the peptide, and (3) spontaneous intramolecular Michael addition of cystein residue to the dehydrobutyrine to yield the desired methyllanthionine-containing cyclic peptide. Expression of such natural product-like peptides in the mRNA-dependent manner allows us to prepare a wide variety of the cyclic peptides, and thus the mRNA-encoding library of such peptides can be utilized for drug discovery in the future.

Why did you choose ChemComm to publish your work? 

It has a high impact factor and broad readership in chemistry.

Where do you see your research heading next? 

Using our technologies, a new class of peptidic drugs inspired by naturally occurring peptides will be discovered against various therapeutic targets. 

What do enjoy doing in your spare time? 

Playing guitar - jazz, fusion, and rock music. 

If you could not be a scientist, but could be anything else, what would you be? 

A Guitarist! 

Interviewed by Philippa Ross