C3 Seminar - Synthesis of Strigolactones and Strigolactone Mimics

Title: Synthesis of Strigolactones and Strigolactone Mimics
Speaker: A/Prof Christopher McErlean – The University of Sydney

Our increasing world population is reliant on rice, wheat, oats, sorghum, and similar crops. The complex mechanisms by which these plants (and indeed all plants) absorb nutrients from the soil, how they respond to different levels of soil nutrients, how they modify shoot and root architecture, and how they respond to other plants and microbes, are only just beginning to be unravelled. The family of molecules called the strigolactones appear to play critical roles in these and many other aspects of the plant life-cycle. Synthesis is the only reliable means of accessing these molecules.

This presentation will detail our recent synthetic work on the rapid, enantioselective synthesis of strigolactones and strigolactone mimics, as well as preliminary biological data on the importance of stereochemistry.

Speaker Bio:

Christopher McErlean is an associate professor of the School of Chemistry at The University of Sydney. His research focuses on synthetic organic chemistry, reaction development and total synthesis. He is interested in developing new reactions, and applying known reactions in novel ways, in an effort to reduce the complexity of natural product synthesis.