…and this is a 
It's another exciting day of exciting lectures, I hope. I know that this morning was the most anticipated one on my dance card; here's what we're looking forward to.
Osamu Shimomura: Chemistry of Bioluminescence
Martin Chalfie: GFP and After
Roger Y. Tsien: Building and Breeding Molecules to Spy on Cells, Tumors, and Organisms
Richard Royce Schrock: Recent Advances in Olefin Metathesis Catalyzed by Molybdenum and Tungsten Alkylidene Complexes
Werner Arber: Molecular Darwinism
OK, I confess, Schrock's lecture won't be my cup of tea, and I have no idea what his title says, but the rest sound fun, and the last one sounds controversial. I'll be back in a few hours with some short summaries.
Comments
Posted by: PZ Myers
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July 2, 2009 2:51 AM
Now I feel bad about being unexcited about Schrok's talk --he's standing right next to me, getting the rock star treatment from a mob of chemists, and he seems to be an extremely nice guy. I guess I'll have to stay awake through olefin metathesis.
Posted by: Owlmirror | July 2, 2009 2:54 AM
I would guess that "Molecular Darwinism" is something like you've expressed here -- the concept of evolution applied to organic chemical and environmental combinations bootstrapping themselves to becoming life.
Or something like that.
Posted by: Simon Scott | July 2, 2009 2:59 AM
If you need a way to stay awake PZ, just imagine what Im up to with your trophy wife while you are away :)
Posted by: a lurker | July 2, 2009 3:00 AM
Oohh, as someone who works with proteins fused with GFP variants a lot (though not with the newer fruit-inspired ones), I'm looking forward to your summaries of Shimomura, Chalfie, and Tsien.
Posted by: Angus Prune | July 2, 2009 3:17 AM
"Richard Royce Schrock: Recent Advances in Olefin Metathesis Catalyzed by Molybdenum and Tungsten Alkylidene Complexes"
That looks pretty interesting to me. I briefly looked into olefin metathesis way back when I was doing honours, but back then all I could find was using hellishly expensive ruthenium catalysts. Some more details on this one would be nice :)
Posted by: Bruce | July 2, 2009 3:57 AM
To give a hint of the significance of the work of organometallic research groups such as those of Bob Grubbs (Caltech) and Dick Schrock (MIT), consider this Schrock paper.
"Efficient Enantioselective Synthesis of Piperidines through Catalytic Asymmetric Ring-Opening/Cross-Metathesis Reactions." Cortez, G. A.; Schrock, R. R.; Hoveyda, A. H. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2007, 46, 4534-4538.
If you want to make a new chemical to use as a medicine, you have to be able to make it efficiently in order for it to be affordable. Many biological molecules have chirality (left- or right-handedness, as with shoes), where only one or the other form is useful. So you need to be able to do many synthesis steps that select for the correct enantiomer.
It would also be great to make new plastics efficiently from recycled materials, or to make more efficient ones from the same amounts.
The Grubbs and Schrock catalysts make many of these possible and practical. As the world leaders in this area, they have been a bright spot for US science. Of course, they got their starts back when US government research funding was available for risky new ideas, not just proven incremental ones. Our investments in them have paid off well, but now many in our country think we don't have the patience to keep it up.
Posted by: Berner | July 2, 2009 12:25 PM
Oh man I would kill to hear that Schrock talk. It's directly relevant to the topic of my first published paper.
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ct800088e?prevSearch=%255Bauthor%253A%2BBerner%255D&searchHistoryKey=
Posted by: Sili
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July 2, 2009 5:22 PM
Schrock is chemistry superstar (even I know the name - and vaguely recall some of the general gist of the reactions), but I doubt he'll be of much interest to you. Or rather his talk - the man, himself, might well be a great guy.
I'm not enough at home in biology to come up with a comparable name ...