CHED 104 |
| What is more appealing than to extract a natural product from familiar materials and to detect minute quantities by a chemiluminescence reaction that lights up the entire test tube with a bright red glow? Described here is such an engaging natural product isolation sequence. Protoporphyrin IX is extracted from brown hen's egg shells using a variety of methods. The extracted porphyrin diacid can be esterified, chromatographed using TLC, detected by UV-vis or fluorescence spectroscopy, or by ESI(+) mass spectrometry. Using a number of procedures initially presented by Brandl, the porphyrin solutions are susceptible to detection using a chemiluminescence reaction. Thus, the common brown hen's egg serves a pedagogical tool discuss a number of topics: The chemistry of the extraction and esterification, the optical properties of the extended π-systems of porphyrins, the relationship between UV-vis and fluorescence spectra, the structure and biological significance of porphyrins, and the mechanism of the chemiluminescence reaction. |
|
General Posters
7:30 PM-9:30 PM, Sunday, August 19, 2007 BCEC -- Exhibit Hall - B2, Poster
Division of Chemical Education |