June Featured Molecules

The paper by Corey E. Stilts and Roxanne Fisher describing an experiment begun in the organic labs and completed in a biochemistry–cell biology lab provides the featured molecules for this month. The molecules in Figure 1 of that paper have been added to the collection. There is nothing particularly surprising about their structures, but students might be interested in seeing whether they can determine any structure/regulating effect relationships as the number of synthesized auxin derivatives grows. Additionally, students with little or no biochemistry background might wish to explore other systems that act as growth regulating hormones in plants, as an introduction to the variety of molecular structures that can display such bioactivity. Such molecules range from the very simple, ethene, to the adenine-derived cytokinins (an example of which, zealtin, is shown here) and the brassinosteroids. Brassinolide, a commonly occurring brassin, is also shown. These latter two structures have also been added to the molecule collection. All of the structures have been optimized at the HF/6-31G(d) level.

zealtin

brassinolide

Students can examine all these plant-related structures, along with other molecules in the collection, at the JCE Digital Library Web site.