The development of chiral organometallics for asymmetric synthesis is a topic of significant research in the recent past. The most studied in this class are the chiral organolithium reagents with many reported examples. The primary focus of our research is the development of C_α-chiral Grignard reagents, where the metal bearing α-carbon is the sole source of chirality. Examples of such Grignard reagents are rare owing to the problems associated with their synthesis, and their low configurational stability. We have studied these problems in three different modules of this project. Reactions of 1-magnesio-2,2-diphenyl-cyclopropylcarbonitrile with carbon electrophiles are first attempted in order to expand the utility of this configurationally stable C_α-chiral Grignard reagent in asymmetric synthesis. This reagent has been shown to be non-reactive towards carbon electrophiles at low temperatures. Consequently, we attempt to enhance the reactivity of this compound through two different approaches, Lewis-base activation and the "ate-complex" generation. The Magnesium/Halogen (Mg/X) exchange reactions have been shown to be extremely useful in the synthesis of complex Aryl, alkenyl (sp²) and alkynyl (sp) Grignard reagents. Examples of Mg/X exchange reactions of Alkyl (sp³) halides are, however, rare. Even more rare are such examples with secondary and tertiary alkyl halides, justifying the relative paucity of chiral Grignard reagents. In this module of our project, we study the Mg/X exchange reactions on secondary alkyl halides possessing a γ-hydroxyl group, as an internal activator for such Mg/X exchange reactions. Enantiomerization pathways of chiral organolithium compounds have been widely studied. However, few such studies have been performed on chiral Grignard reagents. In this module of the project, we studied the solvent assisted enantiomerization mechanism of the C_α-chiral 1-magnesio-2,2-diphenyl-cyclopropylcarbonitrile. Rate constant for the enantiomerization of this compound was measured in three different ethereal solvents to study the effect of solvent on the configurational stability. Finally, the order of the enantiomerization process with respect to [Et₂O] was studied in order to predict the mechanism of this process in Et₂O solvent. Our kinetic studies on the enantiomerization process provided us with a definitive picture for the enantiomerization of the C_α-chiral 1-magnesio-2,2-diphenyl-cyclopropylcarbonitrile, where solvation of the Grignard reagent preceded an ion-pair separation step which eventually lead to enantiomerization of the Grignard species. However, the precise structure of all the involved solvated intermediates could not be determined as kinetics was not able to distinguish between these intermediates. We next performed computational calculations to study the effect of solvation on the analogous 1-magnesio-cyclopropylcarbonitrile in order to address the unanswered questions from our kinetic studies. / Ph. D.

Protein (mis)folding into highly ordered, fibrillar structures, amyloid fibrils, is a hallmark of several, mainly neurodegenerative, disorders. The mechanism of this supra-molecular self-assembly reaction, as well as its relationship to protein folding are not well understood. In particular, the molecular origin of the metastability of the soluble state of proteins with respect to the aggregated states has not been clearly established. In this dissertation, it is demonstrated, that highly accurate kinetic experiments, using a novel biosensing method, can yield fundamental insight into the dynamics of proteins in the region of the free energy landscape corresponding to protein aggregation. First, a section on Method development describes the extension and elaboration of the previously established kinetic assay relying on quartz crystal microbalance measurements for the study of amyloid fibril elongation (Chapter 3). This methodology is then applied in order to study in great detail the origin of the various contributions to the free energy barriers separating the soluble state of a protein from its aggregated state. In particular, the relative importance of residual structure, hydrophobicity (Chapter 4) and electrostatic interactions (Chapter 5) for the total free energy of activation are discussed. In the last part of this thesis (Chapter 6), it is demonstrated that this biosensing method can also be used to study the binding of small molecules to amyloid fibrils, a very useful feature in the framework of the quest for potential inhibitors of amyloid formation. In addition, it is shown that Thioflavin T, to-date the most frequently employed fluorescent label molecule for bulk solution kinetic studies, can in the presence of potential amyloid inhibitor candidates be highly unreliable as a means to quantify the effect of the inhibitor on amyloid formation kinetics. In summary, the work in this thesis contributes to both the fundamental and the applied aspects of the field of protein aggregation.