Molecules of Life
Up to date schedule information
Molecules of Life
This course evolves around the synthesis of the naturally occurring biopolymers: carbohydrates, peptides and nucleic acids. These biopolymers play vital roles in life as we know it, and the course will teach how we can assemble well-defined fragments of these and apply these to answer biological questions and in therapeutic agents. Protecting group methodology and coupling strategies will be presented. The synthesis, and application of synthetic hybrid structures (glycoproteins, nucleopeptides, PNA) will be shown.
Course objectives
After the course the student should be able to:
Know the name, structure, one letter code of all proteinogenic amino acids;
Be able to design a chemoselective protecting group scheme for all amino acids;
Know the most common peptide coupling reagents;
Design a synthesis for a small peptide sequence;
Understand conformational behavior of carbohydrates;
Understand the reactivity of the different functional groups on a carbohydrate;
Be able to design a protecting group scheme to site-selectively mask the functional groups in a carbohydrate building block;
Understand the basics of glycosylation chemistry and factors influencing the stereochemical outcome of glycosylation chemistry;
Design a synthesis route for a (simple) oligosaccharide;
Understand phosphorous (III and V) chemistry;
Understand modern DNA and RNA chemistry;
Be able to design a route of synthesis for an oligonucleotide;
Combine peptide/carbohydrate and nucleic acid chemistry to synthesize hybrid structures.
Literature
Handouts and papers from current literature.
Amino Acid & Peptide Synthesis, John Jones, 2nd edition, ISBN: 9780199257386
Assessment method
Written exam (“closed book”)
Expected Background
Basic knowledge of organic chemistry (BSc in Chemistry, Molecular Science and Technology, Life Science and Technology or a related discipline).