Tags: Organic Seminar


Marine Biotoxins: Synthesis and Biological Impact


DNA-templated peptide fragments in mimicking protein-protein interactions


Diversely-Functionalized Oligonucleotides: Discovery of Modified DNA Aptamers and DNAzymes


Recent Efforts Toward Stereoselective Synthesis of Tetrasubstituted Olefins

Tetrasubstituted alkenes are a difficult functional group in organic synthesis to synthesize. The desire for stereoselective synthesis of tetrasubstituted alkenes has grown as well. Alkene synthesis can be divided into five categories of reactivity: Wittig-type, elimination, metathesis, additions across alkynes, and miscellaneous.  These reactions have a specific stereoselectivity that is seen in most cases. New methods for tetrasubstituted…


Recent Advances in o-Benzyne Chemistry: Aryne C¬–C Bond Insertions, Regioselective Syntheses with Benzdiyne Equivalents, and the Hexadehydro–Diels–Alder Reaction

Benzynes, as intermediates, have been known to chemists since the 1940’s through studies published by Wittig, Gilman, Horning, and Roberts.  The methods of generating this intermediate have evolved over time from using strong bases at low temperatures to milder conditions.  The most common method for generating o-benzyne is by the elimination of o-(trimethylsilyl) triflates with a fluoride anion source, the process of…


Tapping into the Full Potential of Light to Enable Chemical Synthesis

Chemical synthesis enables other sciences, and often its development is paramount to their success. This project seeks to develop new strategies for chemical synthesis. Visible light carries with it an enormous amount of energy, the equivalent to heating a reaction to nearly 35,000 oC.  However, most molecules do not absorb this light, and are unaffected by it.  Furthermore, only a few strategies for harvesting this photochemical…


Synthesis of CP-PAH Based Electron Accepting Materials and Highly-Ordered Polymer Nanostructures

This presentation will highlight two recent projects from my laboratory in which we have 1) synthesized new electron accepting materials based on cyclopentafused-polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (CP-PAHs) and 2) created highly ordered polymer nanostructures via polychromophore architectures. In the first part of the talk, both small-molecule and polymeric electron acceptors that incorporate CP-PAH scaffolds will be described.  Our synthetic…


Triazole-Au(I) Catalysis: From stability to selectivity

Homogeneous gold catalysis has been developed explosively during the past decades.  Despite the remarkable electrophilic activation of alkynes by cationic Au(I) catalysts, such as PPh3Au+, one challenge is to overcome their poor stability at high temperature.  However, in order to activate some less reactive substrates, such as internal alkynes, harsher reaction conditions are usually required. As a good σ-donor and π-receptor,…


Decarboxylative Fluoroalkylation and Fluorination Strategies for Modulating Properties of Neurotherapeutics

Alcohols, ketones and aldehydes represent some of the most commonly exploited functional groups for synthetic transformations, and the extensive number of these motifs in natural products and pharmaceutically important building blocks provides a wide variety of potential substrates for transformations. In this field, we have developed new reactions and synthetic sequences using decarboxylative strategies and fluorinated alkenes to convert simple…


PROTEIN CARBOHYDRATE INTERACTIONS AND DISEASE

The recognition of carbohydrates by proteins is an important phenomenon in living systems and also plays a role in numerous diseases. Interference with these interactions is an important goal towards drug development. Interference is possible by multivalent carbohydrates that greatly enhance inhibitory potency compared to monovalent inhibitors. Bacterial lectins and toxins have been explored with the goal of optimizing inhibition by optimizing…
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