As much as I’ve enjoyed my forays into analytical and flavour chemistry, yesterday afternoon I had a relapse and attended the Arthur C. Cope session on organic chemistry in the cathedral-sized ballroom. Actually, the cathedral analogy doesn’t seem a bad one, as sometimes it does feel as if there’s a certain amount of worshipping going on.<\/p>\n
I really enjoyed this session because it had an ecelectic mix of topics. Highlights for me included Kenneth Shea<\/a>‘s talk on how to build polyethylene molecules from single-carbon units, in a living polymerization reaction involving ylides and diazoalkanes. In this way, he’s made some unusual polymers – such as chains with high steric congestion that can’t be prepared using traditional methods for polyolefin preparation.<\/p>\n I also liked Leonard MacGillivray<\/a>’s presentation on solid-phase organic reactions. He co-crystallizes pairs of organic compounds to form lattices in which hydrogen-bonding aligns the molecules in a perfect orientation for reaction – specifically, photodimerization reactions between alkenes to form cyclobutanes. Because the lattice holds the molecules in very specific orientations, the stereochemistry of the process is precisely controlled.<\/p>\n But my favourites were Dave Macmillan<\/a> and Andre Charette<\/a>. Charette described his work on the preparation of chiral amines by adding organozinc reagents to N-phosphinoylimines. Now I’ve always been a bit dubious about dialkylzinc compounds, because they’re a pain to make. But Charette has thought of this, and has developed a relatively simple way to make them from zinc methoxide – so top marks for thinking of the practicalities.<\/p>\n MacMillan discussed his work on SOMO<\/span>-activation reactions using organocatalysis. I liked the way that he gave much of the credit for this idea to his co-worker, Teresa Beeson. His group are currently developing new reactions using SOMO<\/span>-activation, so expect to see enantioselective alpha-halogenation of aldehydes, vinylation reactions, and the enentioselective alkylation of cyclic ketones (which apparently requires a completely different catalyst to the one currently published).<\/p>\n All in all it was a top session. The only down-side was the way that people in the audience would get up and leave as soon as the speaker they were interested in had finished. I know that people have to focus on lectures in their own fields to get the most out of these meetings, but if they’d stuck around for the whole session I think they’d have found the variety of topics refreshing and stimulating.<\/p>\n Andy<\/p>\n Andrew Mitchinson (Associate editor, Nature<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As much as I\u2019ve enjoyed my forays into analytical and flavour chemistry, yesterday afternoon I had a relapse and attended the Arthur C. Cope session on organic chemistry in the cathedral-sized ballroom. Actually, the cathedral analogy doesn\u2019t seem a bad one, as sometimes it does feel as if there\u2019s a certain amount of worshipping going on. Read more<\/a> Continue reading