Tags: Organic Seminar


Controlling Chemical Reactivity: From Small Molecules to Polymers


Mechanistic Insights Facilitate the Development of Transition Metal Catalyzed Processes


New Strategies in Radical-Based Aliphatic C-H Fluorination

  In 2018, almost 50% of all small-molecule drugs approved by the FDA contained fluorine. The appeal of fluorine substitution in drug candidates can be attributed to the improved properties fluorine exerts on a molecule such as blocking undesired metabolism and increasing potency, absorption, or binding affinities. Incorporation of the radio isotope, [18F], to bioactive molecules also has applications in medical imaging as well as…


Cooperation of Experiment and Theory in Enzyme Design

Scientists have exploited enzymes as catalysts for various chemical transformations for over 30 years. The benefits of using enzymes over other synthetic catalysts are numerous and include their specificity, selectivity, and stability. These strengths can also be weaknesses; enzymes are often only active for a few substrates, while synthetic catalysts can often be readily-tuned to increase substrate scope. The directed evolution of enzymes has…


Towards automation in oligosaccharide synthesis

Carbohydrates are the most abundant molecules among the four essential classes of biomolecules that also include nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins. Unlike proteins and nucleic acids, which follow template-driven synthetic pathways, there is no general route to the synthesis of carbohydrates. This literature seminar will focus on the commonly used methods to synthesize oligosaccharides and the gradual movement of the field towards automation.


Synthesis and Bioimaging applications of Aggregation induced emission Nanoparticles

Aggregation induced emission (AIE) molecules are a type of compounds that emit weak fluorescence in diluted solution but emit strong fluorescence in aggregated state. Traditional organic fluorescent molecules tend to emit strong fluorescence in diluted solutions, but their fluorescence will be quenched in aggregated state, which are also known as aggregation-caused quenching (ACQ) effect. The effect is due to the excimer formed due to the π-π…


Incorporation of Benchtop NMR into Undergraduate Instructional Laboratories: Bringing Multi-Outcome Experiments to a New Level

In a multi-outcome experiment (MOE), there is at least one modifiable unknown component for students to identify. In the three projects in this talk, unknown starting material will the unknown component to identify. Student will utilize a series of modern analytical techniques to characterize the final product, including NMR spectroscopy, IR spectroscopy and melting point determination. This kind of multi-outcome experiments help bridge the gap…


Recent advances in Z-selective Olefin Metathesis


DAD: A Novel Reaction or an Old Dog with New Tricks

Carbon-carbon bond cleavage remains a frequently difficult synthetic task, yet nature is built upon the making and breaking of carbon-carbon bonds through enzyme-catalyzed reactions. One example, 2,4’-dihydroxyacetophenone dioxygenase (DAD), catalyzes the oxidative cleavage of the α-hydroxyketone side-chain of 2,4’-dihydroxyacetophenone (DHAP). While this enzyme has only been cursorily investigated, the DAD reaction bears notable similarity to…


Mechanism of the enzymatic synthesis of furan-containing compound

This research project stems from the desire to explore and eventually harness the enzymatic mechanism of 4-(hydroxymethyl)-2-furan-
carboxaldehyde-phosphate synthase (MfnB). The enzyme of interest, MfnB, is found most prominently in methanogens and has the ability to catalyze five or more separate chemical transformations in a single active site. This singular enzyme takes two molecules of glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate to create a furan-containing…
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