Honors Organic Chemistry Lab
After excelling on Organic Chemistry Lab and Lecture, nine students were chosen out of several hundred to be part of the Honors Organic Chemistry Lab. Unlike the normal organic track, this lab was run mostly by the students and actual research was being conducted. While I enjoyed the six months of Honors Organic Chemistry Lab, I realized that I do not want to work as a researcher for my career.
Dr. Deborah Lieberman, Ph.D at the University of Cincinnati was our lab leader. She, and Dr. Allan R. Pinhas, Ph. D cued our group into their research. The idea was to make an oxazolidinone, a useful antimicrobial agent. Baterial resistance is growing at an unprecedented rate due to improper usage of antibiotics, and oxazolidinones are used as a sort of last resort to fight bacterial infection (specifically, they inhibit the binding of tRNA to the ribosome in bacteria) . However, the current industrial synthesis for oxazolidinones is quite costly and largely inefficient. Our goal was to try to find a more efficient way to synthesize this compound with more readily available chemicals.
Most of us started with N-methylaziridine, but from here we went our separate ways to end up at the end product. My partner and I attempted to create a product in standard room temperatures (with the exception of adding dry ice for one step) and then place the product with another reagent into a ball mill that rotated the two reagents together to form oxazolidinone. At the end of the research, we did get some oxazolidinone but unfortunately not at percentage yields that would deem the result more efficient or less costly.
Dr. Deborah Lieberman, Ph.D at the University of Cincinnati was our lab leader. She, and Dr. Allan R. Pinhas, Ph. D cued our group into their research. The idea was to make an oxazolidinone, a useful antimicrobial agent. Baterial resistance is growing at an unprecedented rate due to improper usage of antibiotics, and oxazolidinones are used as a sort of last resort to fight bacterial infection (specifically, they inhibit the binding of tRNA to the ribosome in bacteria) . However, the current industrial synthesis for oxazolidinones is quite costly and largely inefficient. Our goal was to try to find a more efficient way to synthesize this compound with more readily available chemicals.
Most of us started with N-methylaziridine, but from here we went our separate ways to end up at the end product. My partner and I attempted to create a product in standard room temperatures (with the exception of adding dry ice for one step) and then place the product with another reagent into a ball mill that rotated the two reagents together to form oxazolidinone. At the end of the research, we did get some oxazolidinone but unfortunately not at percentage yields that would deem the result more efficient or less costly.
While we did not publish any papers, we did make a lot of headway for the next students about what works, what doesn't, and where to go from here. The lab wasn't a failure by any means. This lab taught me something very important about lab sciences and techniques: even if everything is done correctly, usually there are no significant results. It is almost guaranteed that your results will differ from expected results. Working in a lab, from one day a week to four or five days a week, is a tedious job, especially when you are often the only one in the lab repeating the same steps. Working with machines like mass spectrometers and HNMR, while awesome within themselves, were time consuming. Lab work wasn't really my passion, I soon discovered.
Despite all the precise mechanisms and countless issues I encountered, I did find one aspect I thoroughly enjoyed: joining minds to try to solve a problem. The other students and I relied on research, precedent, and knowledge of organic chemistry during our weekly meetings. If it weren't for this communication, I'm not sure much would have been accomplished. Finding a solution was a challenge, and it was this sort of challenge that made my lab experience something important to me. When an experiment ran awry, you couldn't just give up. There had to be another solution. It was thrilling to bounce ideas off each other or reveal positive results. It was this process of experimentation, challenge, and perseverance that pushed me more towards medicine and further from laboratory research. Each case can be seen as its own challenge, and it is up to a team to find a solution.
Below is one of the final presentations, summarizing our research and some of our findings.
Despite all the precise mechanisms and countless issues I encountered, I did find one aspect I thoroughly enjoyed: joining minds to try to solve a problem. The other students and I relied on research, precedent, and knowledge of organic chemistry during our weekly meetings. If it weren't for this communication, I'm not sure much would have been accomplished. Finding a solution was a challenge, and it was this sort of challenge that made my lab experience something important to me. When an experiment ran awry, you couldn't just give up. There had to be another solution. It was thrilling to bounce ideas off each other or reveal positive results. It was this process of experimentation, challenge, and perseverance that pushed me more towards medicine and further from laboratory research. Each case can be seen as its own challenge, and it is up to a team to find a solution.
Below is one of the final presentations, summarizing our research and some of our findings.