The overarching theme of this thesis is the development of non-natural oligomers for use in biological applications. Chapter I details the synthesis and studies of modified peptide nucleic acid (PNA) oligomers. PNA is a synthetic oligonucleotide mimic that binds to natural nucleic acids with extremely high affinity and specificity, making...
Surfaces and interfaces, which are ubiquitous in the environment, control the mobility,speciation, and ultimate fate of groundwater species. The presented work provides insight into the interfacial behavior of three environmental pollutants: hexavalent chromium, oxytetracycline, and morantel. Model surfaces are employed for these studies, including (1-102) α-Al<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub> and a carboxylic acid-terminated...
Direct dynamics quasiclassical trajectory (QCT) calculations are performed to study the dynamics of model atom + polyatom reactions. In the first part of this thesis, we examine adiabatic dynamics of H/O reaction with simple alkanes, CD4 and C2H6. Overall good agreement with state-of-the-art experiments shows that the molecular motion is...
This dissertation covers the synthesis and study of peptide nucleic acids (PNAs), specifically, derivatives of PNA containing amine-bearing sidechains or cyclopentane portions. PNAs are non-natural nucleic acids that have far reaching potential in therapeutics and nucleic acid detection. Despite immense potential and widespread application, improving on the design and applications...
Climate change may be one of the most important puzzles the world has attempted to solve and one of the greatest challenges in this area is to improve our understanding of how atmospheric aerosol particles impact climate processes. We seek to overcome this challenge by focusing on the chemistry and...
The ability to track labeled cancer cells in vivo would allow researchers to study their distribution, growth and metastatic potential within the intact organism. Magnetic Resonance (MR) imaging is invaluable for tracking cancer cells in vivo as it benefits from high spatial resolution and absence of ionizing radiation. However, many...