Trinity College Dublin

Dr. Carola Schulzke Lecturer . Office : 1.6 Main Chemistry Building Phone : +353 1 896 3501 Fax : +353 1 671 2826 Email : schulzkc@tcd.ie Group Webpage :

Research Interests

Bioinorganic Chemistry

Thermophilic and hyperthermophilic microorganisms live in or directly by hot and sulfurrich submarine vents or springs on the surface. In contrarst to mesophilic organisms these unusual creatures use tungsten instead of molybdenum in the active centres of their molybdopterin containing enzymes. Whether this is done due to the environmental condition because of stability -, redoxpotential- or supply-reasons is not finally resolved until today. In order to examine, whether the change of metal is efficiency specific (possibly due to a different redox potential shift by tungsten- and molybdenum-enzymes with rising temperatures) compounds are synthesized, which model the active centers of these enzymes.

Along with other characterisation methods in particular the temperature-dependent measurement of their redoxpotentials is of importance. We try to model with our ligand systems not only the dithiolene function of the natural molybdopterin ligand but also its pyrane function. The synthesized models are investigated in the lab and theoretically (DFT calculations) with respect to their reactivity as well as their ability to open this pyrane ring. We also explore new synthetic pathways to (at first) simple molybdenum and tungsten dithiolenes especially with unsymmetrical ligands. A further aspect of this research work is the chemical similarity of molybdenum and vanadium. Bacteria that contain the molybdenum dependent formate dehydrogenase are cultivated within vanadium containing media to determine whether they are able to utilize vanadium alternatively. Furthermore model compounds with Vanadium are synthesized and subjected to the same research methods as the molybdenum and tungsten models. A task is here to predict where on earth naturally occurring vanadium containing oxidases can possibly be found.

Selected Publications

• Anukul Jana, Herbert W. Roesky, Carola Schulzke, Alexander Döring,“Reactions of Tin(II) Hydride Species with Unsaturated Molecules”, Angew. Chem. In. Ed., 48(2009), 1106-1109
• Carola Schulzke, “Trendbericht Bioanorganische Chemie”, Nachr. Chem., 55(2007), 239-242
• Qingwei Zhang, Kerstin Starke, Carola Schulzke, Anja Hofmeister, Jörg Magull,“Different Coordination Chemistry of Molybdenum and Tungsten – Reactions of the Dichloro Dioxo Complexes with Thiolate”, Inorg. Chim. Acta, 360(2007), 3400-3407
• Xiaoli Ma, Kerstin Starke, Carola Schulzke, Hans-Georg Schmidt, Mathias Noltemeyer, “Structural, electrochemical and theoretical investigations of new thio- and selenoether complexes of molybdenum and tungsten”, Eur. J. Inorg. Chem., (2006), 628-637
• Carola Schulzke, "Temperature dependent electrochemical investigations of molybdenum and tungsten oxobisdithiolene complexes”, Dalton Trans., (2005), 713-720

Last updated: February 17, 2009

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Last updated: Feb 17 2009

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