It is my intent, as Director of Chemical Education for the Canadian Society for Chemistry, to increase the awareness and appreciation of these types of recent advances in chemical pedagogy. My work with fourth year undergraduate students has focused on the study of metalloenzymes. The mechanism by which the copper participates in the oxidation of organic metabolites with concomitant reduction of molecular oxygen is explored using spectroscopic, kinetics and electrochemical probes. Knowledge gained about the active site structure and catalytic mechanisms by which the enzymes function is used to direct the synthesis of catalytically active enzyme models. Use of these model compounds may ultimately facilitate treatment of genetic diseases, such as albinism, which result from a cell's inability to synthesize tyrosinase and therefore its inability to produce melanin pigments.
Related work involves proteins with binuclear iron centers.
Compounds that model the structural and spectroscopic properties of hemerythrin and purple acid phosphatase are synthesized and their catalytic activities determined in an attempt to define the structure-function relationship within the proteins. Selected References 1.