A fully funded 3-year PhD studentship is available from October 2010 to work on the synthetic chemistry and novel applications of calixarene scaffolds envisaged as new generation organocatalysts for programmed (sequential) multi-step synthesis. The goal is to mimic in a simplified system the programming strategy of modular polyketide biosynthesis (PKS). Polyketide antibiotics are an important and diverse class of natural products, produced in Nature by long sequences of individual steps performed on a tethered (and growing) acyl chain, covalently attached to the acyl carrier protein at a thioester. In modular PKS, C-C bond formation and subsequent reduction and dehydration steps are performed by a cluster of enzymes associated with the ACP. The project seeks to establish the same principle on a much smaller scale employing an advanced differentially-functionalised organo-scaffold, in which the substrate is tethered, not to ACP, but by a flexible linker to one of the sites on the rim of a calixarene. Using methods of differential functionalisation developed recently at UEA, reactive or catalytically active functionality will be placed at the remaining positions. The project will apply and extend these methods of differential functionalisation and define the reactivity properties of the products in novel multi-step organocatalysis processes in which the outcome is pre-programmed by the pattern of reactive features on the scaffold. This project is funded by an EU Anglo-Norman Interreg scheme and the student will have the opportunity of an international research placement in France (Caen, Le Havre or Rouen).
Funding Notes
Funding is available for UK/EU students. Funding awarded for this project will cover tuition fees and stipend for UK students. EU students may be eligible for full funding, or tuition fees only, depending on the funding source. International students will not be eligible for this funding however they are still welcome to apply for the project but would have to find alternative funding.
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