Objective
Catalysts in organic chemistry allow reactions to proceed with high enantio, diastereo and regioselectivities. In addition to metal catalysts and organocatalysts, molecules, which resemble natural enzymes (the most effective catalysts known) could be very useful in chemistry. The development of this kind of catalysts will profit from the theoretical investigation of the reaction mechanisms by computational chemistry methods, as the most important factor in enzyme catalysis is the stabilization of the reaction transition state. The theoretical methods can also be used for the investigation of the optimal arrange of groups that can stabilize more effectively the transition state. This theoretical obtained arrange of groups is known as theoretical enzyme, or theozyme. In the research case, we propose the investigation of the catalytic mechanism of three different organocatalyzed reactions. The relevance of these reactions is stated in the growing number of publication involving them. But, in addition, we also pro pose the study of theozymes for these reactions that could be useful in the design of enzyme-like catalysts. The theozyme models will also be used in the development of automatic algorithms that, starting from the theozyme obtained for a reaction and from databases containing molecules fragments, could help in the design and synthesis of the catalysts. These algorithms are supposed to operate in a similar fashion to docking algorithms, and hopefully will be as helpful for catalysis as docking is for pharmacephore investigation.
Fields of science
Keywords
Call for proposal
FP6-2005-MOBILITY-5
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Funding Scheme
EIF - Marie Curie actions-Intra-European FellowshipsCoordinator
CAMBRIDGE
United Kingdom