Workshop in organic chemistry for non-chemists

Workshop in organic chemistry for non-chemists
21-27 May 2024
14:00-16:00 (we may not use all of this time)
by Sarah O’Connor, Jonathan Gershenzon

This short course is designed to help you become proficient in understanding and drawing the chemical reactions that are most important in Chemical Ecology. The goal is that by the end of the course you will be more confident in understanding how a molecule in biology might react.
On Tuesday, bring a laptop with Chemdraw installed. We will practice using Chemdraw on Tuesday.
Bring paper and a pen each day. We will practice drawing chemical structures and mechanisms.

21 May, Tuesday:
Lecture: pKa values, nomenclature, electronegativity, fundamentals of bonding, resonance, functional groups that you will encounter in biological chemistry
Workshop: Looking at reactivity of biologically active molecules

22 May, Wednesday:
Workshop: How to make nice looking chemdraw structures, and using the features of chemdraw
Lecture: Reactions of carbonyl chemistry

23 May, Thursday:
Lecture: Common enzyme mechanisms in natural products (serine proteases, reductases, polyketide synthases)
Workshop: Drawing out an enzymatic mechanism

24 May, Friday:
Lecture: Enzyme mechanisms of natural products, part 2 (terpene synthases, cytochrome P450s, other priorities?)
Workshop: Another mechanism to draw

27 May, Monday:
Lecture: Cool chemical probes in chemical biology and how they work (click chemistry, Michael acceptors, activity based protein profiling)
Workshop: Predicting where probes will react