This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
With this award from the Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program, Mary Hatcher and colleagues Thomas Poon, Anna Wenzel and Burke S. Williams from Claremont McKenna College will acquire a 500 MHz NMR spectrometer to support research from investigators at this college as well as some from Pitzer and Scripps Colleges and Harvey Mudd and Pomona Colleges. Some of the research projects that will be supported by this spectrometer include 1) the study of dynamics of DNA oligomers to better understand the role of DNA dynamics in protein-DNA recognition events and the effects of cytosine methylation, 2) studies of how titanium complexes of chiral amino-alcohol ligands catalyze the asymmetric catalytic hydroamination of aminoallenes to give chiral alpha-vinyl pyrrolidine products, 3) determination of structures of natural product antibiotics, 4) study of hydrogen bonding in carbohydrates, 5) chacterization of the stereocontrol of reactions involving singlet oxygen, 6) mimicking biological reaction pathways in the construction of the complex natural products (+)-davanone and endiandric acid and to study the selectivity of these biomimetic cyclizations, 7) investigation of asymmetric methodologies for the preparation of chiral small molecules, and 8) investigation of hybridization effects on carbon-carbon (C-C) bond formation reactions and the characterization of unusual C-C sigma-agostic complexes.
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is one of the most powerful tools available to chemists for the elucidation of the structure of molecules. It is used to identify unknown substances, to characterize specific arrangements of atoms within molecules, and to study the dynamics of interactions between molecules in solution. Access to state-of-the-art NMR spectrometers is essential to chemists who are carrying out frontier research. The results from these NMR studies will have an impact in synthetic organic/inorganic chemistry and biochemistry. This instrument will be an integral part of teaching as well as research.
