With the support of a CAREER award from the Chemistry of Life Processes Program at the National Science Foundation, Professor Erin Carlson of Indiana University will lead a research program that will focus on the development and application of chemoselective methods for the exploration of natural product chemical space. Continued investigation of natural products is essential for the discovery of small molecules to probe biological processes, as therapeutic leads, and to identify new molecular architectures for synthetic and biosynthetic studies. Current isolation strategies facilitate enrichment based on a restricted set of mechanisms that are dependent upon physical properties such as solubility or size. Generation of a method that separates compounds by a unique and complementary mechanism, such as functional group composition, would represent a major advance in the field and is a major goal of the proposed research. Preliminary work in Professor Carlson's lab has resulted in the generation of a tagging strategy for the enrichment of alcohol-containing natural products and confirmed the ability of this method to facilitate detection of low abundance species. This award will enable pursuit of tagging strategies for additional functional group classes and application of these tools to the exploration of myriad natural products sources resulting in the discovery of new natural products and novel chemical scaffolds.
This CAREER award to Professor Carlson of Indiana University will result in a number of broader impacts. Of particular emphasis will be the utilization of natural products as a platform to ignite an interest in and appreciation for chemistry, especially in girls and young women. Girls often do not feel a connection with science - they lack an understanding of how it is useful or relevant to their lives and cannot relate to the people they perceive as being scientists. Interest in science needs to be generated and nurtured to encourage girls to continue with science education. The PI will develop an outreach program called Natural Products and Lighting the Fire of Curiosity to ignite an interest in science in local elementary and middle school aged girls. This program will introduce students to natural products, focusing on compounds produced by plants. The outreach materials generated will be broadly disseminated via the internet to enable teachers worldwide to utilize these resources. To date, this program has been shared with over 125 students and is now published as an official activity available to Girl Scout troops throughout southern Indiana. Natural products will also be used as inspiration for the development of laboratory curriculum at Indiana University that more closely resemble genuine research experiences. Inquiry-based modules will be devised and included in both introductory and advanced organic laboratories.
