Group
News
Yura left last week after we bid him farewell over a few “blue cups” and Chanello’s Pizza (which by the way has the best dipping sauce in the entire world!). His work on kynurenine and kynurenine derivatives went well and we’ll miss his stark sense of humor.
The arrival of Dr. Nataly Lebedeva from the ITC center in Novosibirsk, Russia has given our lab a lot of momentum. She is studying relaxation effects in radical pairs with Q-band microwave frequencies (35 GHz). She has driven the resurrection of the Q-band spectrometer and was responsible for other upgrades to our instrumentation. At one point last week we had all three spectrometers running at the same time. Ryan’s data acquisition software brings the lab up to the 21st century and Tom’s diligence with 193nm beam delivery system has paid off.
The weather in Chapel Hill has gotten unbearable! The major heat waves have started and the air is so humid you could slice it with a knife. Shown above is a picture of the group outside of the Daily Grind where we go to get coffee. This was one of the mild summer afternoons without a heat index of 1200.
Belgian
Film Crew Spends Two Days Filming in the Forbes Lab for Documentary
Our Research at a Glance
The Forbes laboratory is broadly based in the chemistry and physical interactions of free radicals. We use a variety of time-resolved magnetic resonance techniques to probe structure, reactivity, and dynamics of free radicals and radical ions in systems as diverse as:
Amino acids, short peptide chains,
proteins
Polymers
Soaps including synthesis of novel surfactants
Crude oil, hair, beer, and sunless tanning lotions
Radical Chemistry of Amino Acids and Peptides
- Amino Acid Radical Chemistry
- Photo-oxidation of Dipeptides
- Electron Transfer between Biologically Relevant Donors and Acceptors
- Solid Phase Peptide Synthesis
Fundamental Studies
- Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Micelles
- Radical Pair Dynamics Inside Micelles
Polymer Degradation and New Lithographic Materials
- Polymer Photodegradation
- Radical Pair Dynamics in Supercritical CO2
- 193
nm Photolysis of Emmersion Lithography Materials
-TREPR
-Construction
of Grazing Incidence Transient Optical Absorption (TOA) Instrument
- Characterization of
Flourinated Polymers for CO2 Lithography
Applied Projects
- Beer Photolysis
- Radical Chemistry in Sunless Tanning Lotion
- PEG Surfactant Photochemistry
- Hair Photochemistry
Group Meeting Schedule
January
-15th Ryan MacArthur—Bimolecular Structural Insight from EPR
-22nd Tom Chen—Back to the Future: A Review of High Pressure EPR in CO2
-29th Aaron Low—Solid Phase Peptide Synthesis
Chris Badawi—Alternatives to Organic Synthesis of Peptides
February
-5th Nate Stasko—CIDNP of Amino Acids
-12th Ryan White—Radical Interactions as a Probe for Chain Dynamics
-19th Malcolm Forbes—Detecting an EPR Signal
-26th Malcolm Forbes—Detecting and EPR Signal (part 2)
March
-3rd Ryan MacArthur—Presentation of Master-b Simulation Software
-11th No Group Meeting
-18th Tom Chen—Closs, Forbes, Norris Paper
-25th Aaron Low—Oxidation of Met35 and Alzheimer’s Disease
Chris Badawi—Oxidative Stress and Superoxide Dismutase
April
-1st Ryan White—Radical Pairs in Micelles
-8th Nate Stasko—Electron Transfer Between Biologically Relevant Donors and Acceptors
-15th Malcolm Forbes—Business and Travel Schedule
-22nd Ryan MacArthur—Data Acquistion Demo
-29th Tom Chen
May
Malcolm’s West Coast and Japan Trip
June
-10th Welcome Back and Lab Update
-17th Malcolm Forbes—CFN vs. Micro-reactor Model for Radical Pairs
-23rd Nataly Lebedeva—Stimulated Nuclear Polarization (SNP)
-30th Ryan White
July
-7th Nate Stasko
Malcolm’s Trip to Russia and Gordon Research Conference
