Organic Chemistry:

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• Organic Chemistry
• -the study of carbon based compounds
• Why is carbon so important to life?
• -life is based on carbon
• -carbon has a valence of 4
• this allows the synthesis of long complex
  molecules

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• Other elements that are important to life
• -Hydrogen
• -Oxygen
• the cell is composed of 70 to 90 water
• -Nitrogen
• -Phosphorus
• -Sulfur

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Brief History of Organic Chemistry

• Throughout history we have used organic molecules
  for

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Food
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Remedies
www.kulak.ac.be/facult/wet/biologie
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hotos/willow-001.jpg
tolweb.org/tree/eukaryotes/green_plants/embryophyt
es/gnetales/ephedra/ephedra.1.gif
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Preservatives
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Fuel
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• What compounds do you think 19th century
  scientists considered organic?
• -waxes and oils
• -sugars
• -starches
• -organic excretions
• were considered organic because they came
  from living things
• -carbon found in rocks, petroleum, carbon
  dioxide ect..
• was not considered organic

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• Vitalism was the prevalent theory of life in the
  19th century.
• -describes life as a supernatural process
  beyond physical and chemical laws
• -Some people today consider Chinese chi,
  Indian prana, Japanese reiki, and other
  spiritual and healing practices forms of
  vitalism.

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Fredrick Wöhler 1880 1882 The father of
Organic Chemistry
www.homepages.hetnet.nl/b1beukema/wohler
.html
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• 1828 Wöhler attempted to make ammonium cyanate
  by mixing solutions of ammonium and cyanate ions
  NH4 and CNO-
• At the time he was studying cyanates.

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• -instead he made.

UREA!!!!
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• I must tell you that I can prepare urea
  without requiring a kidney or an animal, either
  man or dog.
• Friedrich Wöhler 1828

www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/mim/environmental/html/urea_
text.htm
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• -Why was this important?
• Up to this point most scientists believed that
  only substances excreted from organisms could be
  made by the vitalistic source in the body.
• Thereafter, Fredrick Wöhler was considered the
  father of organic chemistry.

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• Skeptics were quick to point out that the cyanate
  had been extracted from an animals blood.
• The hard core vitalists were not impressed.

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Hermann Kolbe

• Later in 1845, Hermann Kolbe (Wöhlers student)
  made the organic compound acetic acid from
  inorganic compounds that had not been extracted
  from an organism.
• Most scientists considered these results in
  conflict with vitalism.

www.chemsoc.org/networks/enc/FECS/Kolbe.htm
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• 1953, Stanley Miller, a graduate student at
  University of Chicago conducted a keystone study
  in organic chemistry.

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• Stanley Miller synthesized amino acids by
  simulating the stages of early earth.

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Estimated conditions of a young earth.
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if
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How did Miller do this?

• First he created a chamber with only hydrogen,
  water, ammonia, and methane.
• Then Miller boiled the mixture and sent
• electricity through it to simulate time
• and conceived conditions of early earth.

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Stanley Millers Experiment 1945
http//www.astrosurf.com/lombry/Bio/millerstanley.
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• After a week later her found the following amino
  acids had formed glycine, alanine, aspartic acid
  and glutamic acid!!!

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Glycine
chem4kids.com/files/aminoacids/art/glycine.gif
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Alanine
www.chem4kids.com/files/aminoacids/art/alanine.gif
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Aspartic Acid
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Glutamic Acid
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• Why were Stanley Millers results significant?
• Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins
  and proteins are the building blocks of life.

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• Why were Stanley Millers results controversial?
• They conflict with a the idea of a literal
  divine intervention or creation of life.

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• How were Wöhler, Kolbe, and Millers significant
  in the history of science?
• They helped shift the paradigm of organic
  chemistry from vitalism to mechanism.
• Mechanism is the paradigm that all natural
  processes, including those of life, are governed
  by physical and chemical laws or rules.