A-Cleavage mechanism

During solid phase synthesis peptides are bound to the solid support by means of the C-terminal carboxyl group. The properties of the anchor group positioned between the growing oligomer and the solid support are crucial for the success of a solid phase synthesis. Usually, specialised linkers are used which provide either peptide carboxylic acids or peptide carboxylic amides upon cleavage [4]. A cleavage mechanism that proceeds by a nucleophilic attack... 

Herz and Iyer have proposed an a-cleavage mechanism with the intermediacy of a cyclopropyl ketene for formation of the polycyclic acetal 42 from photolysis of the rigid cyclopentenone 4339 The cleavage reaction is thought to occur via an n,7r triplet state of unusually high energy for a cyclopentenone (75 kcal/mole). 

The photochemistry of dibenzyl sulfoxide 10 was briefly reported in the mid 1960s [21,22]. It was said to decompose mainly to benzyl mercaptan (isolated as the disulfide 17) and benzaidehyde 16. Though no mechanism was suggested at the time, it is now clear that these products arise from a standard a-cleavage mechanism, followed by secondary photolysis of the sulfenic ester 13. The careful reader will note that the yield of bibenzyl (19) is very low in comparison to photolysis of dibenzyl ketone. Sulfinyl radicals rarely lose SO, though some net extrusions are discussed later. 

A singlet a-cleavage mechanism (d> = 0.14, independent of solvent) is presented to account for most of the products, but there are quirks that do not appear in other sulfoxides. First, no sulfenic ester is observed, although it is likely that the GC analysis used would not have detected it. Generally, only trace ethane was observed. Furthemore, photolysis of DMSO-dg in non-deuterated solvents (water, benzene, acetonitrile) results nearly exclusively in CHDj, which eliminates the usual disproportionation reaction ... 

For m/e 59 the sequence of primitive operations forming the a-cleavage mechanism is presented as follows ... 

Ha T, Ting A Y, Liang J, Caldwell W B, Deniz A A, Chemla D S, Schultz P G and Weiss S 1999 Single-molecule fluorescence spectroscopy of enzyme conformational dynamics and cleavage mechanism Proc. Natl Acad. Sc/. USA 96 893-8... 

With certain donor substituents at C-3 the experimental findings may be rationalized rather by a diradical mechanism, where formation of the new carbon-carbon single bond leads to a diradical species 6, which further reacts by bond cleavage to give the diene 2 ... 

This mechanism applies to cis-l,2-diols and to open-chain 1,2-diols that can arrange in cisoid conformation. Tran -1,2-diols also do undergo the cleavage reaction, but at considerably lower rate, and by a different mechanism. 

In general the /3-elimination proceeds by a E2-mechanism. It involves cleavage of trimethylamine and a /3-hydrogen from the original substrate alkyl group see scheme above—2 3. In some cases—depending on substrate structure and... 

As a side reaction, the Norrish type I reaction is often observed. The stability of the radical species formed by a-cleavage determines the Norrish type 1/Norrish type II ratio. For example aliphatic methyl ketones 10 react by a Norrish type II-mechanism, while aliphatic tcrt-butyl ketones 11 react preferentially by a Norrish type I-mechanism. 

However, the linear bond cleavage hypothesis of the firefly bioluminescence was made invalid in 1977. It was clearly shown by Shimomura et al. (1977) that one O atom of the CO2 produced is derived from molecular oxygen, not from the solvent water, using the same 180-labeling technique as used by DeLuca and Dempsey. The result was verified by Wannlund et al. (1978). Thus it was confirmed that the firefly bioluminescence reaction involves the dioxetanone pathway. Incidentally, there is currently no known bioluminescence system that involves a splitting of CO2 by the linear bond cleavage mechanism. 

Proteases (proteinases, peptidases, or proteolytic enzymes) are enzymes that break peptide bonds between amino acids of proteins. The process is called peptide cleavage, a common mechanism of activation or inactivation of enzymes. They use a molecule of water for this, and are thus classified as hydrolases. 

A reasonable mechanism is shown in equation 23 methyllithium attacks the sulfur atom, giving the secondary carbanion 36 by cleavage of the four-membered ring. A rapid proton transfer produces the sulfonyl-stabilized carbanion 37 which reacts with the added electrophile to give the product (equation 23)3. 

Meinwald and coworkers71 studied the chemistry of naphtho[l, 8-bc]thiete and its S-oxides. The reaction of the sulphone 2 with LAH (equation 29) is of particular and direct relevance to this section since it is different from the reductions that have been discussed thus far, because the major reaction pathway is now cleavage of an S—C bond, rather than a deoxygenation of the sulphur atom. The major product (equation 29) was isolated in 65% yield two minor products accounted for a further 15% yield. One of the minor products is 1-methylthionaphthalene and this was most probably produced by an initial reduction of the strained 1,8-naphthosulphone, 2, to the thiete, which was then cleaved to the thiol and subsequently methylated. Meinwald also showed71 that the thiete was subject to cleavage by LAH as well as that both molecules were susceptible to attack and cleavage by other nucleophiles, notably methyllithium. These reactions are in fact very useful in attempts to assess a probable mechanism for the reduction of sulphones by LAH and this will be discussed at the end of this section. 

The cleavage mechanism can be clarified by cyclic voltammetries as shown in Figure 5. In aprotic solution (curves a) steps (l) and (2) correspond to the successive electron transfers leading finally to the dianion. On the other hand, in protic solution (curve c), step (2) has disappeared while step (l) has grown and then obviously corresponds to an ECE process. Anyhow, and whatever the medium, step (3) is identified as that in which the produced olefin (here 1,1-diphenylethylene) is reduced in all cases. 

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