Metallomics in Japan

It is my great pleasure that this themed issue on “Metallomics in Japan” is published in the RSC journal, Metallomics. The papers published in this themed issue include contributions presented at the 2nd Metallomics Research Forum, held from 2–3 November, 2010, in the Kyoto Pharmaceutical University, Kyoto, Japan, which was organized by Professor Hiroyuki Yasui (Kyoto Pharmaceutical University). We were very grateful for the RSC’s sponsorship of the Research Forum, and in the closing ceremony one RSC Presentation Award and two RSC Poster Awards were presented to young scientists who gave oral and poster presentations, respectively, at the forum. A photo taken at the forum is shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1 The group photo taken at the 2nd Metallomics Research Forum in Kyoto, Japan. From right to left in the first row: S. Enomoto, S. Himeno, T. Fukada, H. Kodama, H. Yasui, A. I. Bush, H. Haraguchi, A. Takeda. The photograph is supplied courtesy of Professor Hiroyuki Yasui.

The publication of the themed issue, “Metallomics in Japan”, was first proposed at the Metallomics Editorial Board Meeting in March 2010, and the board kindly accepted the offer. Myself and Professor Yasui invited a selection of candidates to submit papers from the Research Forum to the issue. I give my sincere appreciation to Professor Yasui and RSC Editorial staff for their hard work in completing the publication of this themed issue. It should be noted that all submitted manuscripts were evaluated by the regular peer review system of the RSC prior to publication.

On this special occasion, I would like to introduce briefly the activities and recent trends of metallomics research in Japan, as well as in the rest of the world. The term “Metallomics” was coined in 2004 by myself in a scientific paper published in the RSC journal, JAAS.¹ However, the concept of metallomics was proposed before 2004 in domestic and international symposiums held in 2002, about which I discussed in our recent publication in JAAS.² At the International Conference on Bio-Trace Elements 2007 (BITREL 2007), organized by Professor Shuichi Enomoto (presently at Okayama University), I proposed the concept of metallomics as a scientific field, when I delivered the invited paper entitled “Elemental Speciation for Metallomics”.³ This presentation in BITREL 2007 was also described by Szpunar in her first paper related to metallomics.⁴

A more significant event to establish Metallomics as a scientific field was the International Symposium on Metallomics 2007 (ISM 2007), held in Nagoya in 2007.⁵ The ISM 2007 was a successful meeting, and it was agreed at the ISM Advisory Board Meeting that the ISM symposium would be held every two years, going around the world. ISM 2009 was held in Cincinnati, USA, and ISM 2011 was recently held in Münster, Germany. The next meeting will be held in 2013, in Oviedo, Spain.

As for the Metallomics Research Forum in Japan, the first forum was organized by Enomoto as a commemorative event for ISM 2007, which was held in the Showa Womens' University from 28–29 November 2008. In the scientific committee meeting of the first forum we discussed how to establish the metallomics community for the successive organization of the Metallomics Research Forum, and the committee members agreed that the forum would be held every 2 years. Then, the second Metallomics Research Forum was organized under the chairmanship of Professor Yasui, as introduced above. The third Research Forum will be held in 2012, and Professor Yasumitsu Ogra, from Showa Pharmaceutical University and a recent appointment to the Metallomics Editorial Board, will be the chairman.

It was a pleasant surprise when the RSC launched the journal, Metallomics, in January 2009, for which Professor Joe Caruso has been Chair of the Editorial Board from the beginning. Recently, an IUPAC Technical Report was published on Guidelines for terminology, in which Professor Ryszard Lobinski played a key role.⁶ The publication of the journal, Metallomics, and the IUPAC Technical Report have accelerated the progress of metallomics research. I expect, that with the help of the many distinguished scientists in the world, that metallomics will develop slowly and steadily as an integrated biometal science, in cooperation with scientists working on genomics and proteomics as well as in other scientific fields, to further expand the international metallomics community.

References

1. H. Haraguchi, J. Anal. At. Spectrom., 2004, 19, 4–15.
2. H. Haraguchi and N. Furuta, J. Anal. At. Spectrom., 2010, 25, 1371–1377.
3. H. Haraguchi and T. Matsuura, Proceedings of International Conference on Bio-trace Elements 2002 (BITREL 2002), ed. S. Enomoto, published by RIKEN (The Institute of Physics and Chemistry Research), pp. 3–8.
4. J. Szpunar, Anal. Bioanal. Chem., 2004, 378, 54–56.
5. H. Haraguchi, Pure Appl. Chem., 2008, 80, iv–iv.
6. R. Lobinski, J. Sabine Becker, H. Haraguchi and B. Sarkar, Pure Appl. Chem., 2010, 82, 493–504.

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