CHEM 234: Organic Chemistry with Biological Applications
CHEM 234 is the sequel of CHEM 231 as the second half of introduction to organic chemistry. In CHEM 234 we’ll use the fundamentals introduced by CHEM 231 to explore, analyze, and apply chemical reactions to organic synthesis. We will use structure-activity relationships (e.g., electron-rich pi systems are nucleophiles) to rationalize and predict the regiochemistry and stereochemistry of chemical transformations. Regiochemistry relates the region of the starting material where the reaction takes place to a particular reaction product, while stereochemistry results from the cause-and-effect relationship between the 3D-shape of the starting material and the 3D-shape of the product.
The content of the entire course can be summarized as reactions of pi-systems. We’ll see that it is the atoms making the pi-bonds (e.g., carbon-carbon vs carbon-oxygen), together with the relative positions of these pi bonds in a molecule, that give rise to five main reaction mechanisms: electrophilic addition, electrophilic aromatic substitution, nucleophilic aromatic substitution, nucleophilic addition, and nucleophilic acyl substitution. Each one of this reaction mechanisms is the topic of a module in the CHEM 234 lecture book.
The main learning outcomes of CHEM 234 are: discern between different reaction mechanisms and apply them to the synthesis of (biologically) relevant organic molecular targets.