A green thumb and a broad back: a tribute to the late Dr. Yasuo Inoue (1934-2005).

On February 6, 2005, Dr. Yasuo Inoue sent me an email message about his failing health, ending with, " I am sorry to inform you of this unpleasant matter at a joyful festival season [lunar New Year]. — Tomorrow I'll have to return to the hospital and I would not be able to write directly to you in coming days. " Alas, that was the last message I received from him. He closed his wonderful life and splendid career in glycobiology on February 17, 2005, succumbing to hepatic cancer and cirrhosis. Dr. Yasuo Inoue was born in Japanese-occupied Taiwan, in a town south of Taipei, where his father was a director of a brewery. After WWII, when Japan relinquished control of Taiwan, Yasuo returned to Japan with his family to continue his education in middle and high school. After obtaining BS and MS degrees in chemistry from Nagoya University, he traveled to the Australian National University for advanced study in chemistry in the laboratory of Professor Douglas D. Perrin and was awarded a PhD in chemistry in 1963. Although it was an unusual move (since most of the graduate studies by Japanese students were pursued in the U.S. or Europe in those days), it was a perfect choice for him because he met his future wife and lifelong collaborator, Sadako (an excellent glycobiologist in her own right) at the University. They were married upon returning to Japan, and Yasuo spent several years as Assistant Professor in the laboratory of Dr. Koji Nakanishi at the Tohoku University in Sendai, where his interests were mostly nucleotides and NMR. In 1971, Yasuo moved to the Univeristy of Tokyo to become Associate Professor in biophysics and biochemistry. Although his first publication on carbohydrate materials was with Sadako on NMR measurement of sulfated polysac-charide (Inoue and Inoue, 1966) during his Sendai era, his serious interest in glycobiology was not aroused until he helped Sadako (without requesting to be a co-author) on the structural elucidation of trout egg polysialoglycoproteins (Inoue and Iwasaki, 1978) by determining the presence of NeuGc. The " sweet " taste once acquired could only intensify , and as he became more involved in polysialoglycopro-tein, he started to publish collaborative works with Sadako (Nomoto et al., 1982), an arrangement that would last throughout the rest of their careers. Thus began an era of a brilliant glycobiology research team, which would continue for a …