Chemistry Faculty:
Peter R. Schreiner, Ph.D.
Adjunct Professor
Phone: 706-542-1953
E-mail: prs@chem.uga.edu
Biographical Information
Chair of Organic Chemistry, Justus-Liebig University Giessen, Germany, 2002-date
Associate Professor, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, 1999-2002
Privatdozent, University of Göttingen, Germany, 1999
Dr. rer. nat., University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany, 1994
Research Interests
Organocatalysis.
Organocatalysis combines the concepts of molecular recognition as well as supramolecular chemistry with enzyme-like catalytic activity. Noting that about half of all enzymes do not carry a metal center it is obvious that this approach has long been underrated. Although this is an entirely new field, it is already possible to catalyze many types of organic reactions with small, well-designed organic molecules. This circumvents the use of often toxic metals (green chemistry), and the preparation of the catalysts is much easier as it relies on the well-developed synthetic arsenal for tailor-making organic structures. In our group we have developed thiourea-based catalysts that are effective in catalyzing Diels-Alder as well as other reactions.1 At the same time, we develop metal-free, phase-transfer catalytic methods for the direct halogenation (including iodination) of all types of alkanes. This shows the power of the organocatalytic approach as some of these reactions are not even feasible with their metallic counterparts.2 The possibility of binding the catalysts to stationary phases (e.g., polymer beads) and simpler workup procedures (than for metal catalyzed reactions) make this approach particularly attractive and timely.
Carbon-rich Materials. 
This line of research concerns the cyclization reactions (Bergman-, Myers-Saito-, Schmittel-, and others) of enediynes and enyne-allenes which lead to spin-separated biradicals that are capable of abstracting hydrogens from, e.g., from phosphordiester strands leading to DNA cleavage and, ultimately, to cell death. Hence, these highly unsaturated species are potential anti-tumor agents but reactivity control is a problem. We therefore are interested in a detailed understanding of the cyclization mechansims to devise structures or (pro)drugs in which the cyclization may be triggered so that it only occurs in tumor tissues. At the same time we are interested in identifying new cyclization reactions based on polyunsaturated systems. This leads to new synthetic strategies for hydrocarbon synthesis as well as to novel materials such as the bowl-shaped molecule depicted. Using high-level ab initio theory first, we also found that a five-membered ring cyclization from an endiyne to give a fulvene is possible but was never identified as such. The experimental realization of this useful cyclization was just achieved.3,4 Ongoing efforts aim at the preparation of bowl-shaped molecules that may have applications in the area of molecular shrink wraps and nanotechnology.
Computational Chemistry. 
How does one begin to encapsulate the important aspects of chemistry within one concise frame? A time honored place to start is "from the beginning" or ab initio, as it's said in Latin - the modern chemical terminology refers to high-level computations utilizing state-of-the-art mathematical theory as well as computer equipment. The award of the 1998 Nobel prize for computational chemistry is indicative of the key role that calculation has come to play in contemporary science. High-level ab initio results nowadays approach experimental accuracy. In the pharmaceutical industry, computational chemistry, rational design, and molecular simulation are regarded as mainstream. This important transformation is due, in no small part, to explosive technological advances in the microcomputer hardware and software industries, which have placed powerful computational tools in the hands of everyday scientists. Our research program aims at both using and implementing ab initio as well as density functional theory to challenging chemical problems. One of such is the intricate relationship between molecular structure and chirality, as depicted for the series of spiro-anellated triangulanes that exhibit unexpectedly high values for their optical rotation. A second line of research tackles novel ways of solving the Schroedinger equation by implementing geminal functional theory into regular quantum mechanical codes.5
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| - Link to research group website - |
Literature:
[1] Review: Metal-free Organocatalysis Through Explicit
Hydrogen Bonding Interactions
Peter R. Schreiner* Chem. Soc. Rev. 2003, 32,
289-296.
[2] Review: Metal-free,
Selective Alkane Functionalizations
Andrey A. Fokin* and Peter R. Schreiner* Adv.
Synth. Cat. 2003, 345, 1035-1052.
[3] Fulvenes from Enediynes:
Regioselective Electrophilic Domino- as well as Tandem-Cyclizations of
Oligoynes and Eneynes
Peter R. Schreiner,* Matthias Prall, and
Volker Lutz Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2003,42, 5757-5760.
[4] Beyond Schmittel and
Myers-Saito Cyclizations: Rearrangements of 4-Heteroatom-1,2-hexadiene-5-ynes
Binh H. Bui and Peter R. Schreiner * Org.
Lett. 2003, 5, 4871-4874.
[5] Structure-Property
Relationships of Prototypical Chiral Compounds: Case Studies
B. Christopher Rinderspacher and Peter R.
Schreiner* J. Phys. Chem. 2004, 108, 2867-2870.
