{"id":269,"date":"2009-06-05T22:27:05","date_gmt":"2009-06-05T22:27:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2009\/06\/05\/on_chemistry\/"},"modified":"2009-06-05T22:27:05","modified_gmt":"2009-06-05T22:27:05","slug":"on_chemistry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2009\/06\/05\/on_chemistry\/","title":{"rendered":"On chemistry"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my enduring memories of Oxford is sitting in the Chemistry School lecture theatre while a long-haired, leather-jacketed lecturer<\/a> covered the blackboards in chalky organic reactions (the first time ever I heard about S~N~2 reactions; and a whole heap other stuff I have since forgotten) non-stop for an hour. One of the advantages of taking Biochemistry, instead of something less hardcore, say, is that I got to learn real science instead of just squishy biological<\/a> stuff, which might surprise Henry ‘cell biologists are stronger than they look’ Gee.<\/p>\n

\nI’ve also maintained contact with chemists of one flavour or another for several years subsequently, including some very clever people working at a drug discovery company<\/a> based just outside Cambridge. And two of these chaps have written a rather splendid review on chemistry for the non-chemist<\/a> (one of them was at my party a couple of weeks ago). <\/p>\n

\n\"ResearchBlogging.org\"<\/a><\/span>
\nDerived from an in-house workshop The review explains nomenclature and concepts that even the squishiest biologist should be able to understand. The naming conventions for oxygen- and nitrogen- (and everything else-) containing compounds are explained, as well as stuff like solid support chemistry and a little bit on how medicinal chemists actually go about making new compounds for testing. And I learned something too. For example, I didn’t know — or had forgotten — ring numbering conventions. Aromatic rings are numbered to ensure heteroatoms (i.e. non-carbons in rings) bear the lowest possible number.<\/p>\n

\n\"\"
\nRing numbering<\/em><\/p>\n

\nIn the figure above, (a) is correct but (b) wouldn’t be because the nitrogen atom would end up with a higher than possible number. <\/p>\n

\nThere are some silly errors in the paper. Figure 5 is captioned as if it were Figure 4. The heterocyclic animation, I mean amination, in figure 7 isn’t<\/em>. <\/p>\n

\n\"\"
\nspot the difference<\/em><\/p>\n

\nFigure 9 comes before figure 7 and figure 8 is missing. The authors refer to “Laboratoy Equipment” (as if they don’t didn’t have access to a spill chequer).<\/p>\n

\nBut anyway. I want to see more of this sort of thing. I want to see a guide to physics for biology, and I’d quite like to co-write something the other way round: NMR or crystallography or squishy stuff, even genetics<\/a>, for non-biologists.<\/p>\n


\nJordan, A., & Roughley, S. (2009). Drug discovery chemistry: a primer for the non-specialist Drug Discovery Today<\/span> DOI: 10.1016\/j.drudis.2009.04.005<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my enduring memories of Oxford is sitting in the Chemistry School lecture theatre while a long-haired, leather-jacketed lecturer covered the blackboards in chalky organic reactions (the first time ever I heard about S~N~2 reactions; and a whole heap … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}