The Tyler Lab has been working on creating and testing metal complexes with pyridine ligand backbones in an attempt to find one that can produce healthy crystals with antibacterial properties. Antibiotic resistance is a growing concern as there are thousands of cases of antibiotic-resistant infections in the United States every year. Due to this there is a search for alternative antibacterial agents that bacteria can not grow resistant to. Members of the Tyler lab have been focusing on Cu(II) and Ni(II) metal centers bonded to two equivalents of a pyridine aldehyde (R = H, OMe, Me). These special complexes should be able to attack both gram positive and gram negative bacteria, which differentiates them from current antibiotics. A collection of multiple different crystal structures of interest were synthesized over the summer, all characterized with proton NMR, IR, elemental analysis, and X-Ray Crystallography. Furthermore, biological assays of these complexes are currently being studied. The antibacterial studies will be conducted on the free ligands as well as the metal complexes to determine the effect of the metal center on the ligand reactivity. This includes DNA cleavage studies with gel electrophoresis, as well as the start of antibacterial studies against E. Coli by paper disc diffusion and well agar diffusion. These antibacterial studies will be compared to past studies involving metal complexes.