Akabori Shirō

Shirō Akabori ( Akahori Shirō), 20 October 1900 – 3 November 1992 in Chihama, Ogasa (now Kakegawa, Shizuoka Prefecture), was a Japanese chemist and university professor, known for the Akabori amino-acid reactions.

Life and education After graduating from public school, he began training as a pharmacist at Chiba medical school, now Chiba University, in 1918. After graduating in 1921, he joined the pharmaceutical company Momotani Juntenkan. The company hired him as an assistant to the chemist Nishizawa Yūshichi of the Imperial University of Tokyo, where he was taught by Ikeda Kikunae. In the summer of the same year, he followed Nishizawa for a short stay at the Tohoku Imperial University to learn organic chemistry from Majima Rikō. Here he then began research in this field thanks to a scholarship from the company Ajinomoto, which he completed in 1925. From 1930 he held lectures under Majima and obtained a doctoral degree in 1931. and president of the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (Riken) in 1967.

He died in Shizuoka Prefecture on November 3, 1992.

Work Akabori's main research focus was on the chemistry of amino acids and proteins, as well as the biochemistry of their oxidation processes. As a result, he developed a method for the reduction of α-amino acids to α-amino aldehydes (Akabori reduction) in 1931, and in 1943 a synthesis of amino alcohols (Akabori synthesis). In 1952 he reported a method for determination of C-terminal amino acids in proteins by their reaction with hydrazine. In this case, all amino acids (except the C-terminal one) are transformed into hydrazides.

In 1955 he received the prize of Japanese Academy of Sciences and ten years later, the Japanese Order of Culture. The same year, Akabori was recognized as a Person of Cultural Merit and a year later he became an honorary citizen of his hometown. In 1975 Akabori received the Order of the Sacred Treasure.