Development of Collaborative Multidisciplinary Experimental-Computational Approach for Design, Synthesis and Characterization of Novel Compounds with Potential Biological Activitie

Jackson State University, Jackson MS

Investigators

Abstract

This HBCU-RISE project will focus on the synthesis of the anti neoplastic and antibiotic natural products, 11-deoxyfistularin-3 and psammaplysin A, which contain spiroisoxazoline and spiro-isoxazoline moieties, respectively, as the central ring core. The research will incorporate aqueous asymmetric Lewis acid promoted 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition reactions, and oxonium ion mediated cyclizations as the featured synthetic methodologies for the construction of the aforementioned natural products. Jackson State University's synthetic organic and computational chemistry groups will also work together to understand the mechanistic details of the aqueous achiral and asymmetric Lewis acid promoted reactions in order to increase isolated yields and asymmetric induction through designing better Lewis acids and asymmetric ligands. This proposal will broaden the participation of African-American students and increase number of the African-American Ph.D.s in the rapidly developing field of molecular modeling, which links computational chemistry, molecular biology, biophysics, solid state physics, materials science, and molecular graphics.