Optical Methods for EE Analysis of Simple Carboxylic Acids

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With this new award in response to NSF 05-064 "Cooperative Activities in Chemistry Between U.S. and German Investigators (NSF-DFG)", the Organic and Macromolecular Chemistry Program and the Office on International Science and Engineering support the work of Professor Eric V. Anslyn, of the Chemistry Department at University of Texas at Austin. This research will involve investigations of optical methods for the analysis of enantiomeric excess in simple carboxylic acids. The project is a collaboration between Professor Ansyln's laboratory and the research group of Professor Franz Schmidtchen at the Technical University of Munich. The Schmidtchen group will synthesize the chiral carboxylate receptors and analyze the thermodynamics of the chiral discrimination process. The Anslyn group will use these receptors and employ indicator displacement assays to create optical sensing techniques. The optical data will be analyzed using full mathematical modeling and through the use of artificial neural networks. These assays of optical purity will be designed to insure general functional group applicability in the carboxylic acid substrates. In this connection, the receptors will be designed to recognize enantiomers of the carboxylates solely due to chirality at the alpha carbon.These investigations will lead to the development of a user friendly, high throughput analysis for determining enantiomeric excess, which will be of considerable practical importance to the synthetic community and the pharmaceutical industry. In addition much fundamental information concerning the process of molecular recognition will emerge. Students from underrepresented minorities will be recruited into this research project and will have the opportunity to spend six months participating in the project in Germany.