People
Kokubun, Tetsuo
| Job Title | Natural Products Chemist |
|---|---|
| Department | Jodrell |
| Section | Sustainable Uses |
| Science Teams |
Mycology United Kingdom Large-Scale Syntheses |
| Joined Kew | 1997 |
| Foreign Language(s) | Japanese (mother tongue), German (written). |
Qualifications & Appointments
BSc, Univ. Ehime, Japan, 1990
PhD, Univ. Reading, 1994.
Role
Chemistry of metabolites of fungi and plants, especially those influencing behaviour of competitors.
Work is discovery-oriented – screening, isolation and biological evaluation of bioactive metabolites of fungal and plant origin. Efforts are made to utilise the living fungal collections; special attention is directed towards to those organic compounds with antifungal and antibacterial properties produced by isolates of British wood-dwelling fungi. Duties include the co-ordination of all the stages involved, i.e. maintaining and growing of fungal strains, optimisation of the growth conditions for maximum metabolite production, detection and isolation of compounds, and their evaluation. A total of 649 fungal isolates have been worked on in the 2001-2005 period, resulting in 445 bioactive extracts (103 among them being high priority) from c. 3600 screens. From the selected high priority strain/extracts 89 metabolites have been isolated within the last 2 years. Working on building-up a chemical inventory originating from the British native microflora and the living fungal collections at Kew. This work is aimed at assisting classification of difficult groups of organisms, such as lichens, for which chemical data is an integral part of classification. These activities are assisted by and include responsibility for a series of databases recording the accession, tracking live cultures, and metabolites. Also responsible for running and maintaining some laboratory equipment, including the freeze driers.
Projects
Authentication and Chemical Fingerprinting of Economically Important Species
Fungal Metabolites: their Ecological Role and Economic Potential
Selected Publications 2001-2005
Grayer, R, & Kokubun, T. (2001). Plant-fungal interactions: the search for phytoalexins and other antifungal compounds from higher plants. Phytochemistry 56: 253-263.
Grayer, R.J., Eckert, M.R., Veitch, N.C., Kite, G.C., Marin, P.D., Kokubun, T., Simmonds, M.S.J. & Paton, A.J. (2003). The chemotaxonomic significance of two bioactive caffeic acid esters, nepetoidins A and B, in the Lamiaceae. Phytochemistry 64: 519-528.
Kokubun, T., Veitch, N.C., Bridge, P.D. & Simmonds, M.S.J. (2003). Dihydroisocoumarins and a tetralone from Cytospora eucalypticola. Phytochemistry 62: 779-782.
Xie, C., Kokubun, T., Houghton, P.J. & Simmonds, M.S.J. (2004). Antibacterial activity of the Chinese traditional medicine, Zi Hua Di Ding. Phytotherapy Research 18: 497-500.
Ofodile, L.N., Uma, N.U., Kokubun, T., Grayer, R.J., Ogundipe, O.T., & Simmonds, M.S.J. (2005). Antimicrobial activity of some Ganoderma species from Nigeria. Phytotherapy Research 19: 310-313.
Selected Publications pre-2001
Kokubun, T. & Harborne, J.B. (1995). Phytoalexin induction in the sapwood of plants of the Maloideae (Rosaceae): biphenyls or dibenzofurans. Phytochemistry 40: 1649-1654.
Cambie, R.C., Ng, A.S. & Kokubun, T. (1997). Heartwood constituents of Planchonella vitiensis. Biochemical Systematics and Ecology 25: 677-678.
Kokubun, T., Edmond, J. & John, P. (1998). Indoxyl derivatives in woad in relation to medieval indigo production. Phytochemistry 49: 79-87.
Hudson, E.A., Dinh, P.A., Kokubun, T., Simmonds, M.S.J. & Gescher, A. (2000). Characterization of potentially chemopreventive phenols in extracts of brown rice that inhibit the growth of human breast and colon cancer cells. Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention 9: 1163-1170.