Unit information: Intermediate Organic & Biological Chemistry in 2019/20

Unit name	Intermediate Organic & Biological Chemistry
Unit code	CHEM20180
Credit points	30
Level of study	I/5
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 4 (weeks 1-24)
Unit director	Professor. Crump
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	CHEM10003, CHEM10900 (or equivalent mathematics unit as approved by the School).
Co-requisites	None
School/department	School of Chemistry
Faculty	Faculty of Science

Description including Unit Aims

This unit develops the introduction to organic chemistry given in CHEM10003 provide the essential base of organic chemistry required for advanced study at Levels 6 and 7 (Years 3 and 4). It covers the main areas of the subject e.g. the chemistry of carbanions, carbocations and radicals, monofunctional and difunctional carbonyl compounds, aromatic, homocyclic and heterocyclic compounds, amino derivatives and modern aspects of synthesis. Workshops are integral to the unit.

Intended Learning Outcomes

• Judge the different strengths of a range of bases and be able to recall pKa values of commonly used bases;
• Illustrate how bases can be used to make anions and enolates and acids can form enols;
• Be able to draw mechanisms for the reactions of enolates and various carbonyl compounds;
• Employ enolate chemistry in reactions to yield a given synthetic target;
• Describe what is meant by electrophilic and nucleophilic aromatic substitutions and the factors that influence reactivity; Utilise these principles to devise syntheses of substituted aromatic and hetroaromatic rings;
• Describe the factors affecting the general stability and reactivity of carbocations and apply these to chemical syntheses and explaining reaction outcomes.
• An appreciation of the different sorts of reactivity that may be found in organic reactions – stereoselectivity, regioselectivity and chemoselectivity.
• Identify and employ oxidation/reduction reactions and recognise and use functional group interconversions to solve synthetic challenges;
• Be able to explain the ways in which solvents can influence reactions;
• Define resonance, acidity and basicity and identify kinetic vs thermodynamic control of reactions and utilise this to solve synthetic challenges. Identify reversibility in reactions;
• Identify protecting groups for amines and acids and utilise these in syntheses;
• Be able to determine the order of a reaction from kinetic data and determine features of mechanistic steps from physical chemistry data.
• An appreciation of protein structure and the relationship between structure and function;
• Describe basic features of enzyme catalysis and apply this to related examples.
• Describe the basic steps in solid phase peptide synthesis and apply these to design syntheses of short peptides. Be able to describe methods to assay proteins.

Teaching Information

Lectures, workshops and masterclasses (interactive seminar sessions of the whole class) and independent study. An on-line learning environment provides important e-learning resource in advance of workshop sessions. Pre-workshop online material will be provided to assist students with the contact workshop.

Assessment Information

Exam: 2 x 2 hours 30 mins.

Reading and References

Essential reading will be from the following books:

Organic Chemistry, 2^nd Edition, J Clayden, N. Greeves, S Warren, Oxford University Press, 2012.

Further reading from: Aromatic heterocyclic chemistry, D. T. Davies, Oxford Chemistry Primer 1992; Organic Synthesis, The Disconnection Approach, P. Wyatt and S. Warren, Wiley 2008; Workbook for Organic Synthesis The Disconnection Approach, P. Wyatt and S. Warren, Wiley 2009; Organic Synthesis, C. L. Willis and M. Wills, Oxford Chemistry Primer 1995.