Christopher Hartley
Miami University-Oxford, OH·Chemistry
Proteins work because a long chain folds into one specific three-dimensional shape, and that shape does the chemistry: recognizing a target molecule, speeding a reaction. Chemists would like to build non-biological molecules that are both large and shaped this precisely, but synthetic chemistry cannot yet do it.
- Fields
Chemistry
Materials Science
- Topics
foldamers
ortho-phenylene
ortho-arylene
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2027
What they work on
- Determine how chains that combine attractive and repulsive interactions within a single molecule fold, programming structure by inserting pyrazine-2,3-diyl units, nitrogen-containing aromatic rings, into ortho-phenylene sequences.
- Build coil segments needed for tertiary structure in ortho-arylene foldamers, synthetic chains designed to fold, and characterize their solution shapes by NMR spectroscopy combined with computational chemistry.
- Synthesize cage structures containing multiple ortho-phenylene units as simple examples of tertiary structure and test how cage geometry affects the folding of each segment.
- Test how binding guest molecules inside ortho-phenylene cages changes the folding of the host, as a route to molecular recognition scaffolds.
More about the research
This project studies what controls folding in artificial chains, with the goal of reaching the kind of complex architecture that nature gets for free.
Why it matters
Understanding what makes synthetic chains fold into defined three-dimensional shapes is a step toward building large non-biological molecules with protein-like sophistication. The cage and coil structures pursued here could bind small-molecule analytes, which matters for chemical sensing, and may provide new molecular scaffolds for catalysis.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Mark Lipke
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Chemistry
Measure how water trapped inside redox-active porphyrin nanocages changes the acidity of acid-bearing guest molecules and their combined proton-electron transfer, using electrochemistry and 1H NMR to quantify water uptake.
Bruce Gibb
Tulane University of Louisiana, LA·Chemistry
Develop a mild catalytic process for adding iodine to aromatic rings in water that works across a broad range of starting molecules, using supramolecular hosts and the hydrophobic effect.
Vaidhyanathan Ramamurthy
University of Miami, FL·Chemistry
Use water-soluble synthetic host molecules with cavities a few angstroms wide as reaction containers that hold water-insoluble organic molecules during light-driven reactions in water.
The school
Miami University-Oxford: 5 labs on PI Pages, $29M a year on research, 71 research doctorates a year.
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