Chemistry 444 synthesis project
The Chemistry 444 organic synthesis projects are assigned to Chemistry 444 (Advanced Organic Chemistry) students at SUNY Potsdam. The assignment involves describing the total synthesis of a natural product using a poster, which will be written up for posting on the Web.
General description
The focus will be to discuss the main features of the synthesis, it need not attempt to explain every trivial step of the synthesis. Emphasis should be placed on
- The purpose of the synthesis- a useful natural product, or just a reason to "show off their new reaction method?
- The overall synthesis strategy- why put the pieces together in that way? Is it a highly convergent synthesis? Is there a lot of "wasted motion" (putting lots of protecting groups on/off)? Is there a common intermediate or an oft-repeated reaction sequence? Is something longer done in order to make the correct diastereomer or enantiomer? Does the reaction give one pure enantiomer of the product, or a racemic mixture? Why was a particular starting material used?
- The key step(s)- usually the reaction where difficult carbon-carbon bonds are formed, rings are synthesized, or several new chiral centers are formed (stereoselectiively?). Also discuss any unusual pieces of chemistry- why was this unusual, exotic reagent used instead of a common one?
Poster presentation
The poster will be presented at the [Learning & Research Fair on Thursday, April 12. You need to be present at your poster for at least one hour of the fair (10am-2pm).
Remember that a poster is not just a paper pasted onto posterboard – it needs to be much more succinct, with bullet-type points in large font (>18pt) rather than long paragraphs. Pictures help, and the synthesis should be shown in ChemDraw also. Recommended for writing a poster: Powerpoint, or use the wiki (see below).
Web presentation
You will also have the information published on the Web via a course wiki. The wiki may also be used for writing the poster if you wish. A guide to basic wiki markup will br provided to get you started – this is much simpler than traditional HTML. I reserve the right to edit the article to polish it after grading. It is hoped that your paper will be seen by the "world", to help other organic chemistry students!
