Chemistry is all about the details. While lab work might revolve around scientific discovery, practicalities like time and money are inevitable byproducts. Gretchen Stanton, a chemistry doctoral candidate, is working to combat low efficiency reactions by researching easier ways to build molecular complexity. The major technique she employs is called the one-pot reaction, which speeds the product isolation and purification stages using multiple reactions sequentially. This works to eliminate waste and alleviate costs. “Chemists, whether working in academia or in the pharmaceutical industry,” says Stanton, “can use our methods as a tool to make new biologically active compounds or natural products that may otherwise be very difficult to synthesize.”
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