Total Synthesis of Complex Molecules

有了这一奖项，化学合成项目将支持加州大学洛杉矶分校加格教授的基础研究。加格教授将致力于几种自然产生的小分子的化学合成，这些小分子具有具有挑战性的化学结构和良好的生物活性。科学家以受控和有效的方式构建复杂性增加的分子的能力，在药物发现、农业化学和材料科学等受化学合成影响的所有领域都发挥着重要作用。加格教授还将继续努力向年轻人和公众推广科学。这将主要通过外联活动和旨在挑战现有本科教育模式的举措来实现。这项研究涉及一类重要的吲哚生物碱，称为苦参碱。在过去的一个世纪里，这个家族中的30多个分子被分离出来，所有这些分子都具有复杂的化学结构。然而，到目前为止，在秋水仙碱生物碱合成领域取得的进展相对较少，特别是与结构上的近亲相比，例如研究得很好的马钱子生物碱。加格教授的目标是建立一种统一的合成方法，以不对称的方式提供对Akuammiline的各种结构亚类的访问。除了提供几个以前从未获得过的阿库阿米林外，拟议的努力还将使Garg的实验室能够探索后期转化的错综复杂，并确定合成方法的范围和限制，例如中断的Fischer吲哚反应。

With this award, the Chemical Synthesis program is supporting fundamental research of Professor Garg at the University of California, Los Angeles. Professor Garg will pursue the chemical synthesis of several naturally occurring small molecules that possess challenging chemical structures and promising biological activities. The ability of scientists to build molecules with increased complexities, in a controlled and efficient manner, plays an important role across all of the fields that are impacted by chemical synthesis, such as drug discovery, agrochemistry, and materials science. Professor Garg will also continue his ongoing efforts to promote science to young people and the general public. This will be performed primarily through outreach activities and through initiatives that are intended to challenge existing paradigms in undergraduate education. The research involves an important class of indole alkaloids called the akuammilines. Over 30 molecules in this family have been isolated during the past century, all of which possess intricate chemical structures. However, relatively little progress has been made in the area of akuammiline alkaloid synthesis to date, especially in comparison to structural relatives such as the well-studied strychnos alkaloids. Professor Garg aims to establish a unified synthetic approach that will provide access to various structural subclasses of the akuammilines in an asymmetric fashion. In addition to delivering several akuammilines that have not been accessed previously, the proposed efforts will allow Garg's laboratory to probe the intricacies and complexities of late-stage transformations and establish the scope and limitations of synthetic methodologies, such as interrupted Fischer indolization reactions.