Biological Alkene Addition Reactions

Biological organic chemistry takes place in the aqueous medium inside cells rather than in organic solvents, and it involves complex catalysts called enzymes. Nevertheless, the kinds of biological roactions that occur are remarkably nimiUr to laboratory reactions. Thus, there are many cases of biological addition reactions to alkenes. For example, Che enzyme fumarase... 

Carbon-carbon double bonds are present in most organic and biological molecules, so a good understanding of their behavior is needed. In this chapter, we ll look at some consequences of alkene stereoisomerism and then focus on the broadest and most general class of alkene reactions, the electrophilic addition reaction. 

Chapter 7, Alkenes Reactions and Synthesis—Alkene epoxidation has been moved to Section 7.8, and Section 7.11 on the biological addition of radicals to alkenes has been substantially expanded. 

In addition to alkenes and alkynes, allenes have attracted considerable interest due to their unique reactivity and multireaction sites. Therefore, transition-metal-catalyzed nucleophilic addition reaction of amines and imines to allenes has been extensively studied to prepare biologically important amines and nitrogen-heterocycles.31,31d... 

Oxidation of Alkenes Hydroxylation and Cleavage 252 Biological Alkene Addition Reactions 255... 

We know how stabilized carbanions such as enols and enolated enamines are key intermediates in biological isomerization reactions and in carbon-carbon bond-forming and bond-breaking events. In this chapter, we will look at two more important reaction types, called Michael additions and -eliminations, which involve stabilized carbanion species as intermediates. In a Michael addition, a nucleophile and a proton are added to the two carbons of an alkene that is conjugated to a carbonyl group. The reverse of a Michael addition is called a -elimination. 

Chapter 13 discusses the substitution reactions of alkanes— hydrocarbons that contain only single bonds. In previous chapters, we have seen that when a compound reacts, the weakest bond in the molecule breaks first. Alkanes, however, have only strong bonds. Therefore, conditions vigorous enough to generate radicals are required for alkanes to react. Chapter 13 also looks at radical substitution reactions and radical addition reactions of alkenes. The chapter concludes with a discussion of some radical reactions that occur in the biological world. 

Alkene polymers—large molecules resulting from repetitive bonding together of many hundreds or thousands of small monomer units—are formed by chain-reaction polymerization of simple alkenes. Polyethylene, polypropylene, and polystyrene are examples. As a general mle, radical addition reactions are not common in the laboratory but occur much more frequently in biological pathways. 

Aldehydes and ketones are converted into alkenes by means of a nucleophilic addition called the Wittig reaction. The reaction has no direct biological counterpart but is important both because of its wide use in the laboratory and drug manufacture and because of its mechanistic similarity to reactions of the coenzyme thiamin diphosphate, which well see in Section 29.6. 

Because organophosphorus compounds are important in the chemical industry and in biology, many methods have been developed for their synthesis [1]. This chapter reviews the formation of phosphorus-carbon (P-C) bonds by the metal-catalyzed addition of phosphorus-hydrogen (P-H) bonds to unsaturated substrates, such as alkenes, alkynes, aldehydes, and imines. Section 5.2 covers reactions of P(lll) substrates (hydrophosphination), and Section 5.3 describes P(V) chemistry (hydrophosphorylation, hydrophosphinylation, hydrophosphonylation). Scheme 5-1 shows some examples of these catalytic reactions. 

A typical second step after the insertion of CO into aryl or alkenyl-Pd(II) compounds is the addition to alkenes [148]. However, allenes can also be used (as shown in the following examples) where a it-allyl-r 3-Pd-complex is formed as an intermediate which undergoes a nucleophilic substitution. Thus, Alper and coworkers [148], as well as Grigg and coworkers [149], described a Pd-catalyzed transformation of o-iodophenols and o-iodoanilines with allenes in the presence of CO. Reaction of 6/1-310 or 6/1-311 with 6/1-312 in the presence of Pd° under a CO atmosphere (1 atm) led to the chromanones 6/1-314 and quinolones 6/1-315, respectively, via the Jt-allyl-r 3-Pd-complex 6/1-313 (Scheme 6/1.82). The enones obtained can be transformed by a Michael addition with amines, followed by reduction to give y-amino alcohols. Quinolones and chromanones are of interest due to their pronounced biological activity as antibacterials [150], antifungals [151] and neurotrophic factors [152]. 

The /Tamino alcohol structural unit is a key motif in many biologically important molecules. It is difficult to imagine a more efficient means of creating this functionality than by the direct addition of the two heteroatom substituents to an olefin, especially if this transformation could also be in regioselective and/ or enantioselective fashion. Although the osmium-mediated75 or palladium-mediated76 aminohydroxylation of alkenes has been studied for 20 years, several problems still remain to be overcome in order to develop this reaction into a catalytic asymmetric process. 

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