Week 1: Environmental fate of munitions compounds

What a crazy first week here at CMOP! I am working in Dr. Paul Tratnyek’s lab under the guidance of my mentor Ali Salter-Blanc. They are in the middle of a four-year project and I just got plopped right into the middle of it all. The phase of the project that we are currently working on, is determining reaction rates of nitro reduction reactions. Ultimately this project will allow us to formulate QSAR’s (quantitative structure activity relationships), which are correlations between observed properties of a molecule, such as reaction rates, and variables that describe molecules, such as molecular structure or substituent groups. The QSAR’s can help environmental groups or government programs predict the behavior of certain contaminants in the environment, without having to empirically test a whole bunch of data. And this allows them to make decisions about current or future ammunitions compounds. My role in this project is to empirically test a few different nitro compounds and determine their “k” value (their reaction rate) in a reduction reaction.

This week I spent a lot of time reading papers by Ali, by Dr. Tratnyek, and other papers by people doing related research, so I could get up to speed on the project. Also, with Ali’s help, I learned to use the HPLC (high performance liquid chromatography) monitor, and used it to create calibration curves for nitrobenzene (NB), 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT), and 2,4-dinitroanisole (DNAN). With the data from the curve, I will be able to determine the concentration of NB,TNT, or DNAN remaining in the reaction mixture over time. This week I also started my first reaction! The reaction consists of phosphate buffer, varying concentrations of iron porphryn (FeP), cysteine, and nitrobenzene. I am trying to determine the reduction rate of nitrobenzene when the concentration of FeP is varied. So far, I have done one trial, and our data is close to what we know it should be (based on this paper), so next week we are going to investigate the reasons why the k value isn’t quite on point.