Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Just as a person's hands are mirror images of one another, many molecules are also ""handed,"" or chiral. Chiral molecules are important because they are the building blocks of much of biology (e.g., DNA, proteins and sugars) and many interactions, such as those between drugs and their specific targets in the body, depend upon discriminating recognition events between chiral components: only one ""hand"" of a chiral molecule is recognised, while the other is rejected. Our research takes an integrated approach to the development of fundamentally new catalysts for the selective production of single ""hands"" of chiral molecules. Towards this goal, part of the proposed research examines the basic reactivity of the element phosphorus as seen through the eyes of a trained heavy metal chemist. It seeks to discover emergent properties that result from combining two very different portions of the periodic table in new ways. These combinations will give rise to remarkable behaviour arising from cooperative effects that neither the non-metallic nor metallic component alone could elicit. In this way, new applications in catalysis and materials will be uncovered.