Università Roma Tre

The course will address the chemical transformations shared by organic chemistry and biological systems. Indeed, although the functional group elaborations are formally the same, the followed reaction pathways result to be quite different with respect to the experimental conditions of both organic syntheses and biological processes. In such a context, the enzymatic action modes in living systems will be compared and contrasted with the key role performed by temperature, pressure, pH, catalysts and solvents. Keeping this in mind, a few of the most well-known chemical reaction mechanisms will be studied, underlining, step by step, the main similarities and distinctions with the analogous biological transformations