Synthesis and Characterization of a 4-(N,N-dimethylamino) Phthalimide-Substituted Amino Acid, a Polarity-Sensitive Fluorophore

The goal of this project is to chemically synthesize a fluorescent amino acid that will later be used as a glow-in-the-dark building block for proteins. The resulting glow-in-the-dark proteins are of great value to biologists because fluorescent microscopy can then be used to observe the protein’s spatial and temporal location within a living cell. The specific objective of this project is to synthesize the phthalimide-based environment-sensitive fluorescent amino acid shown in the equation below. We have synthesized and coupled the two building blocks and have characterized the coupled product by liquid chromatography mass spectroscopy (LC-MS), 1H and 13C nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. The remaining task is to remove the two protecting groups