An Investigation of Chiral Amino Acid Micelles by means of NMR Spectroscopy — Presentation Detail — Celebration of Scholars

Instructions

Student presentations must have a faculty sponsor.

Abstracts must include a title and a description of the research, scholarship, or creative work. The description should be 150-225 words in length and constructed in a format or style appropriate for the presenter’s discipline.

The following points should be addressed within the selected format or style for the abstract:

A clear statement of the problem or question you pursued, or the scholarly goal or creative theme achieved in your work.
A brief comment about the significance or uniqueness of the work.
A clear description of the methods used to achieve the purpose or goals for the work.
A statement of the conclusions, results, outcomes, or recommendations, or if the work is still in progress, the results you expect to report at the event.

Presenter photographs should be head and shoulder shots comparable to passport photos.

Additional Information

More information is available at carthage.edu/celebration-scholars/. The following are members of the Research, Scholarship, and Creativity Committee who are eager to listen to ideas and answer questions:

Jun Wang
Kim Instenes
John Kirk
Nora Nickels
Andrew Pustina
James Ripley

An Investigation of Chiral Amino Acid Micelles by means of NMR Spectroscopy

Name: Victoria Northrup
Major: Chemistry and Neuroscience
Hometown: Rochester, MN
Faculty Sponsor: Kevin Morris
Other Sponsors:
Type of research: Independent research
Funding: National Science Foundation Grant

Abstract

Surfactant molecules are amphiphilic, meaning they contain both hydrophobic and hydrophilic functional groups. Above a critical concentration in aqueous solution, most surfactants aggregate into micelles with a hydrophobic region in the interior and a hydrophilic region on the surface. This project investigated the amino acid terminated surfactants undecanyl-(L)-alanate (UND-Ala) and undecanyl-(L)-glutamic acid (UND-Glu). The goal of our research was to quantify the effect that solution pH has on the physical properties of the micelles formed by these two surfactants. NMR diffusion experiments were performed to determine the effect of pH on micelle size. Viscosity measurements were used to confirm that the changes observed in micelle diffusion coefficient resulted from changes in aggregate size. NMR titrations were used to measure pK_avalues for the UND-Glu carboxylic acid protons. Finally, the amide proton resonance in both the UND-Ala and UND-Glu NMR spectra disappeared around pH 10-11. Variable temperature NMR experiments suggested that this effect was due to an increase in the rate of amide proton exchange with solvent at high solution pH.

Poster file