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Last Reviewed May 27, 2008
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Phermones are chemicals that are secreted by insects to communicate location of food sources, presence of danger, and to attract mates. One of the phermones secreted by cone beetles (Conophthorus banksianae, C. resinosae, and C. coniperda) is trans-conophthorin.

The goal of this project is to synthesize this natural phermone from readily available starting materials so that it can be used in biological studies with cone beetles.

Cone beetle
Synthetic pathway
KU Chemistry Undergraduate Research
Synthesis of a Known Insect Phermone: trans-Conophthorin
Robert Hachtman, Jaclyn Berg, and Christopher DiJiacomo and Dr. Dan Blanchard
We developed a six-step synthesis that would start with materials we could purchase inexpensively, and would hopefully end at our target compound, trans-conophthorin.
After each step in the synthesis we characterized the intermediate products using one or more of the following techniques: thin-layer chromatography, IR spectroscopy, GC-MS, and NMR. We have successfully completed all steps in the synthesis, except the last one. The NMR spectrum of the second to the last product summarizes our success up to this point.
NMR of phermone precursor