Adventurous combinations of research knowledge (ACORN)

不用说，用化学方法来研究生命的起源是冒险和危险的。然而，所有的生物都必须从某种形式的生命前化学中产生，这已经吸引了化学家几十年。一个特别重要的问题是第一个大分子如蛋白质是如何形成的。人们经常假设，这些分子只有在遗传系统建立之后才会出现（现代世界就是这种情况）。我们将尝试从短肽的浓缩溶液中组装大的蛋白质样分子。这些肽将包含随机排列的氨基酸，我们希望它们能以这种方式聚集在一起，产生一种活性蛋白质样分子。我们将尝试稳定这些大分子并研究它们的性质。项目2含氧官能团是有机化学的支柱。许多最常见的官能团相互转化涉及打破强碳-氧键，这在现代有机化学中似乎是微不足道的操作。虽然这个过程确实很简单，但在必须添加以推动化学完成的活化剂方面总是要付出代价。这种代价可能隐藏在实验室中，因为小规模的反应和强大的分析方法使反应副产物变得不重要。然而，在工艺规模上，对大量的需求可能在成本、纯化、毒性和废物处理方面产生严重的环境和经济问题，这可能使原本良好的反应完全不可行。这些问题的一个强有力的解决方案将是开发使用催化量的活化剂的方法。

Project 1It is hardly necessary to say that taking a chemical approach to study the origin of life is adventurous and risky. However, all living things must have arisen from some form of prebiotic chemistry and this has attracted chemists for decades. A question of particular importance is how the first macromolecules such as proteins were formed. It is often postulated that such molecules would only arise after a genetic system was established (this is the case in the modern world). We are going to try to assemble large protein-like molecules from a concentrated solution of short peptides. The peptides will contain a random arrangement of amino acids and we hope that they will come together in such a way as to produce an active protein-like molecule. We will try to stabilise these large molecules and study their properties.Project 2Oxygenated functional groups are the spine of organic chemistry. Many of the most common functional group interconversions involve breaking the strong carbon-oxygen bond, a seemingly trivial operation in modern organic chemistry. Whilst this process is indeed straightforward, there is always a price to pay in terms of the activating agents that must be added to drive the chemistry to completion. This price can be hidden in the lab, where the small scale of reactions and powerful analytical methods renders reaction by-products unimportant. On the process scale however, the requirement for large quantities can create severe environmental and economic problems in terms of cost, purification, toxicity and waste processing that can render otherwise good reactions entirely unworkable. A powerful solution to these problems would be to develop processes that use catalytic amounts of activating agents.