While the clinical use of antibiotics has provided significant human health benefits over the past several decades, these benefits have always been complicated by the emergence of antibiotic resistance among bacteria. The design and synthesis of molecules which can inhibit these resistance pathways thus represents a viable strategy for combatting these problematic microorganisms. One such pathway, for which my lab has sought to develop a small molecule inhibitor, involves the production of bacillithiol, a low-molecular-weight thiol which allows bacteria to inactivate the antibiotic fosfomycin. Given my position at a teaching-focused primarily undergraduate institution, however, this goal has always been coupled with a desire to a) provide opportunities for student-led research design and b) develop research-based experiences which can be readily incorporated into an undergraduate teaching lab. Accordingly, our synthetic efforts have largely been furthered through the use of student-designed “bite-sized” projects. These projects focus on one or two reactions within the overall synthetic scheme and seek to answer student-posed questions such as “How will altering the temperature impact the yield of this reaction?” Additionally, as students encounter problems throughout the course of their synthetic efforts, I am then able to leverage these problems into actual experiments for our sophomore-level Organic Chemistry teaching labs. These troubleshooting experiments then aid our students in the development of the critical thinking skills demanded of us all as scientists.

Finding pedagogical value in the quest to inhibit bacillithiol biosynthesis

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.