New technologies recently developed have enabled us to directly monitor the sliding movement, chemical reaction and changes in conformational state of single bio-molecules. These studies of isolated biomolecules have demonstrated that they have multiple conformations and their responses to an external signal have variety depending on the environment. However, it is not known whether bio-molecules behave in the same way in bio-systems such as cells and how these behaviors are coupled to their functions. These bio-systems are complex, because they contain large numbers of various molecules interacting to each other and acting dynamically. Difficulty would be expected in understanding the mechanism of the systems, even if experimental data are well accumulated. Recently, theoretical research handling such complex systems is also promising.
This research will focus mainly on molecular signaling systems that transmit and convert cell and gene information, in which dynamic organization into the bio-system is deeply related to the function. Techniques including imaging technique of single molecules in 3D and real time will be developed to visualize and manipulate single molecules in bio-systems and the behavior, structural changes and physical and chemical properties of individual bio-molecules acting in bio-molecular systems will be monitored in real time and space. In addition to clarifying unique operation of these bio-molecules experimentally, new theoretical models will be established by incorporating the experimental data thus obtained. Thereby, ingenious algorithm which governs the molecular signaling system will be elucidated.

The research will conduct research in three major areas.
1. Using single molecular imaging, spectroscopy and manipulation techniques, this research will directly monitor the structural changes and responses of proteins to the external signal at the single molecular level in a real time. Structural diversity and variety in responses depending on the environment will be a key to characterize bio-molecules.
2. Next, this research will construct experimental model systems in which several bio-molecules are assembled and will further develop techniques which enable us to visualize and manipulate individual single molecules in bio-systems including constructed model systems and cells. This will lead us to characterizing behaviors of the bio-molecules in bio-systems and determining the single molecule processes in the bio-systems in a real time and real space.
3. Unique operation of the bio-systems are thought to originate from unique nature of the bio-molecules. To relate the nature of bio-molecules to the bio-systems this research will establish theoretical models by incorporating the experimental results obtained above, based on the information system theory, non-linear physics and non-equilibrium statistical thermodynamics.

In addition to the techniques of molecular biology and structural studies which deal with "actor" in a drama, we will have new technologies, physical engineering methods to see individual "performance of the actor" and the information system engineering method to understand "story of the drama". These researches will give a breakthrough in the research fields of biological molecules and cells.