RESEARCH

Organic and biological chemistry

The group is interested in synthetic chemistry – making molecules and seeing how they behave. This is directed towards origins of life chemistry—testing potentially prebiotic pathways for the formation of molecules, and observing (biological-like) emergent properties that mixtures of such prebiotic molecules might exhibit—and medicinal chemistry—development of new chemical structures and methods to make them, and exploring their biological properties.

Prebiotic Chemistry. The advent of life requires several ‘key ingredients’ – the identity of these, potential routes to their prebiological synthesis, and a study of their properties that lead to biological behaviours is the domain of prebiotic chemistry.

As prebiotic chemists, we seek to understand he transition from primordial soup to primitive organism. This process may be understood by characterising the fundamental interactions of (bio)molecules likely present on the primordial earth. In our group, we look to understand chemical reactivity leading to the formation of biomolecules, and determine whether it may have occurred on a primordial Earth. We look at how such molecules interact with each other in the search for biological behaviours along the transition between inanimate molecules, and biological systems.

Medicinal Chemistry. Chemical structures have endless potential to interact with biology.  We look to modify and redesign small molecules with roles in biology for biological and medical tools and probes. A main interest is nucleoside analogues, which are one of the most successful classes of medicine, and are essential in the fight against viruses, cancer, and other diseases. As with all medicines, a constant supply of structural scaffolds and mechanisms of action is necessary to maximise therapeutic outcomes and combat drug resistance. Effective methods of chemical synthesis are required, to build novel scaffolds and ensure practical access to both novel and existing drug candidates.

Recent Youtube Talks

If you are interested in seeing some of our work presented, check out the following recent Youtube videos (23-6-2023).

Short talk (25 min) and discussion on prebiotic nucleotide synthesis, for NASA PCE3 seminar series (9-6-23). Intro from start, talk starts at 3:00.

For a longer (55 minute) talk on prebiotic nucleotide synthesis, see this talk from (26-8-22)

Short talk (25 min) on prebiotic amino acid derivative synthesis, for Australasia Astrobiology Meeting (15-6-23). Intro from 0:18:16.