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 Professor J. Thomas Ippoliti and colleagues Bartholomew Dahl, Thomas C. Marsh and William H. Ojala from the University of St. Thomas will acquire a 400 MHz nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometer with an autosampler unit. The instrument will be used to support research activities such as: 1) design and synthesis of oxazolidinone antimicrobial agents, photochromic naphthopyrans and biodegradable polylactides capable of adhering to metal stents, 2) exploration of use of a tethering lactone unit in the design and synthesis of biaryl molecular switches, 3) examination of nucleic acid nanoscaffolds containing a single guanine-rich oligonucleotide sequence motif, and 4) co-crystallization of isostructural pairs of "bridge-flipped" benzylideneanilines and phenylhydrazones.
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, materials chemistry and biochemistry. This instrument will be an integral part of teaching as well as research.
The Chemistry Department of the University of St. Thomas has utilized the nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer purchased with this grant to determine the molecular structures of a variety of organic and inorganic compounds. Over 6,600 compounds have been analyzed since the instrument was installed. The molecular structures that have been analyzed with this instrument have been those of molecules exhibiting a wide range of physical and chemical properties. These target molecules have included thermochromic compounds, photochromic compounds, antimalarial compounds, and antibacterial compounds. These compounds generally have been newly synthesized in our undergraduate research laboratories with little or no prior documentation in the chemical literature. They sometimes have been intermediates on the way to a final product; at other times, they have been the final product of a complicated, multistep synthesis. This instrument has allowed us to determine with a high degree of certainty, even in the absence of available prior information concerning these new compounds, the exact structures of the compounds analyzed. It has thus served not only to verify the experimental work we have done but also to guide the experimental work we plan to do. The primary outcome of this project is that the analyses done with this instrument have facilitated the research of a large number of undergraduate chemistry students at the University of St. Thomas, allowing them to gain experience in chemical techniques, both instrumental and synthetic, usually accessible only to students at large research institutions.
