OBC lecture award winner, Akimitsu Okamoto, talks about chemical probes and daydreaming over maps. Vikki Allen meets him in Pittsburgh to find out more               

Akimitsu Okamoto is leader of the Okamoto Initiative Research Unit at RIKEN Advanced Science Institute. He is the 2008 recipient of the Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry lecture award. His primary research interests focus on the design and synthesis of biopolymers, and recognising and visualising single components or atoms in biopolymers.

What inspired you to become a chemist?

I grew up with many empty chemical boxes around the house. My father used to work in a trading company that handled chemicals for the porcelain and chinaware that Nagoya is known for and he used to bring the empty boxes home. I became interested in these boxes; I wanted to know what had been inside them, and what the chemicals had looked like.

What motivated you to specialise in bioorganic/biological chemistry?

I started out in graduate school in synthetic organic chemistry, working on natural products, so I made many compounds. Such compounds are often used in biotechnology. Choosing biological chemistry wasn't a conscious decision. The department that I studied at was very small and gave a good basic range of courses, but I found the 'bio' courses the most interesting and they introduced me to DNA. Bioorganic chemistry sounds good, too! And bioorganic chemistry is such an important field, bridging chemistry and biology. Since then, my research has changed gradually towards biological chemistry.

Obviously, bioorganic chemistry isn't the only important field - there's materials chemistry, environmental chemistry, theoretical chemistry and so on, and these applied chemistries are most fascinating.

I began my independent career nine years ago, initially in collaboration with Professor Isao Saito, who worked at Kyoto University at the time. The projects that we started then led me into the research that I now do.

What hot project are you working on at the moment?

I want to see living cells working. I want to see DNA and RNA working. So in my laboratory, we make lots of nucleic acid probes - fluorescent probes, chemical probes. There are a number of protein probes but we don't yet have any really good methods to look at RNA and DNA.

We are working on a number of projects to look at living cells - stem cells - and are trying to understand the mechanism by which they work. What is it that causes them to live, and to become skin or hair? What is the 'life' in these cells? What roles do RNA and DNA play? It's quite a fundamental project.
What do you love most about your job?

I enjoy my job. There is a lot of work to do in the DNA and RNA field using our chemical probes. The probes work really well, so I like to know that we can use our probes to look at problems and that they are well designed.

You are this year's recipient of the OBC lecture award. How do you feel about the award?

I'm happy, very happy. Of course it is good to know that my work has been appreciated. I would very much like to thank my collaborators and laboratory co-workers. The topic of my award lecture will focus on one particular example of the work we do looking at the use of osmium to investigate cells. It's very interesting.

Which scientist from the past would you most like to meet and why?

This is a really difficult question. I respect all scientists that are dedicated and work hard every day, those who try. Whether you get a really good result depends on if you are lucky or not. I would not be able to choose just one person in particular.

What do you do when you are not working?

I like going to book stores. And I really love maps. I don't have enough time to travel, so I like to read the maps of places that I would like to visit instead. I always buy maps when I do get to travel. Last week, I was giving talks in the Czech Republic and so I bought a country map. I also recently went to Mexico and have a Mexican map too. 

I particularly like the world map. Czech maps and Spanish maps show you the language differences and reflect the different cultures of countries. Sometimes, maps can be funny too. I have an Australian world map that is upside down. The south is at the top of the map and north towards the bottom. I think it's a special map though!

I would love to visit everywhere, but my first ever foreign holiday was to the UK when I was a graduate and I would love to go back. I visited London and Stonehenge.

And finally, if you weren't a scientist what would you be?

When I was an undergraduate, I got a licence to act as a travel agent in Japan. I wanted to be a tour organiser and travel around with groups of people exploring places. I like planning travel, but then I started going into the chemical labs every day and just didn't have the time to do this as well. So, if I didn't do chemistry I would be a tour operator.