Organic Chemistry

This course comprises lectures and tutorials, and expands upon the fundamentals of organic chemistry covered in years 1 and 2. Heterocyclic chemistry, chemistry of biomolecules, structure and reactivity, determination of reaction mechanism, retrosynthesis and stereochemistry are introduced and studied in detail. The course emphasizes chemistry of relevance to modern industry, including the (bio)pharmaceutical industry.

Learning Outcomes
1. Understand the structure, bonding and the influence of the heteroatom(s) of pyridine, pyrrole, indole, thiophene, furan, diazoles, triazoles and tetrazoles, and the affect on reactivity.
2. Write reaction schemes and give curly arrow mechanisms for aromatic substitutions on the above heterocycles, as well as Diels-Alder and 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition reactions.
3. Understand the chemistry of peptide synthesis
4. Understand how organic structure and reactivity are related quantitatively & approaches to determining organic reaction mechanism
5. Use a retrosynthetic approach to design a multistep synthesis for a carbon based molecule
6. Apply basic stereochemical principles to the structure and reactions of carbon based molecules
7. Demonstrate knowledge of the structure and function of biomolecules
8. Demonstrate an understanding of protein structure in the context of the properties of amino acid residues, the peptide backbone and environmental factors