Natural Product Synthesis: A Context for the Study of Molecular Structure and Reactivity

In this project, funded by the Chemical Synthesis Program of the Chemistry Division, Professor Lawrence J. Williams of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey aims to establish a deep understanding of the structure and reactivity of dissymmetric molecules and to extend significantly the strategic application of dissymmetric molecules in chemical synthesis. As part of this project, compounds that are dissymmetric due to stable conformer formation will be synthesized in enantioenriched form. Dissymmetric species lack the archetypal stereogenic center or axis of chirality and have been used as key strategic elements only very rarely. Suitable scaffolds will be prepared for structural, mechanistic, and methodology studies, and will be evaluated for their ability to undergo stereoselective transformations to give structurally complex natural products of value for further study. The broader impacts involves training undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students in a diverse and integrated learning environment that encourages knowledge and experience sharing and builds ties and collaborations in the greater New Jersey chemistry community. This project could advance the knowhow to prepare synthetic products. Be they chemicals, reagents, catalysts, intermediates, therapeutics, polymers, or molecular tools, probes, materials, or machines, the uses of synthetic products span science and engineering and permeate the modern world. Much of the knowledge categorized as organic chemistry was extracted, either directly or indirectly, from studies aimed at the synthesis of challenging molecules and complex molecule synthesis continues to be the most effective conduit for advancing our understanding of molecular structure and reactivity.