Organic Chemistry for Dummies 2nd Edition by Arthur Winter, PhD

Chapter 1: The Wonderful World of Organic Chemistry

Shaking Hands with Organic Chemistry

The Soap Opera of Organic Molecules

• Organic molecules control life processes such as: metabolism, genetic coding, and energy storage.

• Antifeedants: nasty organic compounds that are unpleasant tasting or toxic to those who consume them.

What Are Organic Molecules, Exactly?

• Organic molecules ALL contain carbon.

• Organic Chemistry: to study molecules made of carbon and to see what kinds of reactions they undergo and how they’re put together.

• Uses for Organic Chemistry: make better drugs, stronger plastics, better materials to make faster/smaller computer chips, better paints/dyes/coatings/explosives/polymers, etc.

• Connectivity of fields of chemistry is a relatively new idea.

• Organic molecules were falsely thought to have “vital life force” that other molecules didn’t possess. This theory of “vitalism” was refuted.

• However these divisions are still in place to define the branches of physical chemistry, inorganic chemistry, and biochemistry.

• Carbons have the capability of forming 4 bonds, so molecules can be of varied/intricate designs.

• Carbon bonds have both stability and reactivity—they are not too strong nor too weak. This makes them the backbone of life.

• Goldilocks principle: carbon bonds are neither “too hot” nor “too old”, but are “just right”

  • If they were too strong, carbon would be unreactive and useless

  • If they were too weak, carbon would be unstable and just as useless.

• Carbon forms strong bonds to itself and with a variety of other elements.

• Carbon can form a vast array of molecules.

• Carbon bonds can double back to form rings.

An Organic Chemist by Any Other Name…

Synthetic Organic Chemists

• Synthetic organic chemists: interested inmake organic molecules; in particular, they take cheap and available starting materials to convert into valuable ones.

  • They are in charge of developing procedures to construct complex molecules.

  • Others may use known procedures to make complex compounds using many individual, known reactions.

  • They often flock to the pharmaceutical companies, mapping out the most efficient procedures/pathways to make drugs, optimize reactions to make these valuable organic molecules as cheaply and efficiently as possible.

Bioorganic Chemists

• Bioorganic chemists: interested in how enzymes of living organisms function.

  • Enzymes: very large organic molecules that work to catalyze all reactions in the cell.

    • They range from being moderately important such as the ones that break down our food and store energy to the really important ones such as the ones in yeasts that are responsible for fermentation or breaking down of sugars into alcohol.

  • These chemists can also design enzyme inhibitors, which are useful because they make up a great deal of the drugs on the market today.

    • Enzyme inhibitors: molecules that block the action of these enzymes.

Natural Products Chemists

• Natural products chemists: isolate compounds from living things.

  • Natural products: organic compounds isolated from living organisms.

  • Many drugs, today, are derived from natural products. Once these natural products are extracted from living organism, chemists test them for biological activity.

  • If they do find a compound that shows a useful biological activity, the structures of these natural products are modified by the synthetic organic chemists to increase the potency/reduce the number of harmful side effects.

Physical Organic Chemists

• Physical organic chemists: study the underlying principles and behaviors of organic molecules.

  • Some model the behavior of chemical systems and understanding the properties and reactivities of molecules.

  • Others study and predict how fast certain reactions will occur; this specialized area is called kinetics.

  • Others study the energies of molecules, and use equations to predict how much product a reaction will make at equilibrium; this area is called thermodynamics.

  • Physical organic chemists are also interested in spectroscopy and photochemistry, both of which study the interactions of light with molecules.

Organometallic Chemists

• Organometallic chemists: interested in molecules that contain both metals and carbon. They make and optimize organometallic catalysts for specific kinds of reactions.

Computational Chemists

• Computational chemists: model compounds (both inorganic and organic compounds) to predict many different properties of these compounds.

  • They model many drugs on the computer using in silico drug design.

    • In silico drug design: the drug is designed in the silicon-based computer; focuses on modeling to see which compounds would best fit into the drug’s target receptor.

    • This is more efficient as it allows for rational drug design.

      • Rational drug design: the use of the brain and a molecular model to come up with the structure of a drug instead of simply using the “brute-force methods” that involve testing thousands of randomly selected compounds and looking for biological activity.

Material Chemists

• Material chemists: are interested in inorganic and organic materials such as plastics, polymers, coatings, paints, dyes, explosives.

  • They also design environmentally safe detergents that retain their cleaning power.