Carbanions internal return

The kinetic method of determining relative acidity suffers from one serious complication, however. This complication has to do with the fate of the ion pair that is formed immediately on removal of the proton. If the ion pair separates and difiuses into the solution rapidly, so that each deprotonation results in exchange, the exchange rate is an accurate measure of the rate of deprotonation. Under many conditions of solvent and base, however, an ion pair may return to reactants at a rate exceeding protonation of the carbanion by the solvent. This phenomenon is called internal return ... 

This process is referred to as internal return, i.e., the base returns the proton to the carbanion faster than exchange of the protonated base with other solvent molecules occurs. If internal return is important under a given set of conditions, how would the correlation between kinetics of exchange and equilibrium acidity be affected How could the occurrence of internal return be detected experimentally ... 

If a carbanion is thermodynamically accessible, but is subject to rapid quenching by internal return of C02 in the case of decarboxylation, or by a proton in carboxylation, or in a hydrogen/deuterium exchange reaction, then the carbanionic intermediate off the enzyme would give the appearance of greater basicity than its thermodynamic value would predict. The localized character of the carbanion at the 6-position of UMP requires that the proton that is removed by a base in solution initially remains closely associated, and therefore, to a great extent be transferred to the carbanion. This reduces the rate of exchange and creates a discrepancy between kinetic and thermodynamic acidities. 

By examination of the stereochemical consequences of decarboxylation, Cram and Haberfield8 obtained evidence for internal return of carbon dioxide to the carbanion, affecting the stereochemical outcome of these reactions. It is reasonable to consider that the barrier for the combination of the carbanion and carbon dioxide may be comparable to or lower than that for diffusion, in which case the reverse reaction will be a kinetically significant component in the overall rate of reaction. In such a case, a catalyst cannot deal with the direction of the reaction -if it lowers the transition state energy for the forward reaction, conservation of energy demands that it also lower the barrier for the reverse reaction. The energy for addition of the carbanion to carbon dioxide is also inherent. The reaction should occur readily if the reaction partners have reduced entropy. 

We can consider decarboxylation reactions in terms that are analogous to those in proton transfer reactions the reactivity of the carbanion in carboxylation reactions is analogous to internal return observed in proton transfer reactions from Bronsted acids. Kresge61 estimated that the rate constant for protonation of the acetylide anion, a localized carbanion (P A 21), is the same as the diffusional limit (1010 M s1). However, achieving this rate is highly dependent on the extent of localization of the carbanion. Jordan62 has shown that intermediates in thiazolium derivatives are also likely to be localized carbanions, which implies that protonation of these intermediates could occur at rates approaching those of other localized carbanions. 

We have presented evidence that pyrrole-2-carboxylic acid decarboxylates in acid via the addition of water to the carboxyl group, rather than by direct formation of C02.73 This leads to the formation of the conjugate acid of carbonic acid, C(OH)3+, which rapidly dissociates into protonated water and carbon dioxide (Scheme 9). The pKA for protonation of the a-carbon acid of pyrrole is —3.8.74 Although this mechanism of decarboxylation is more complex than the typical dissociative mechanism generating carbon dioxide, the weak carbanion formed will be a poor nucleophile and will not be subject to internal return. However, this leads to a point of interest, in that an enzyme catalyzes the decarboxylation and carboxylation of pyrrole-2-carboxylic acid and pyrrole respectively.75 In the decarboxylation reaction, unlike the case of 2-ketoacids, the enzyme cannot access the potential catalysis available from preventing the internal return from a highly basic carbanion, which could be the reason that the rates of decarboxylation are more comparable to those in solution. Therefore, the enzyme cannot achieve further acceleration of decarboxylation. In the carboxylation of pyrrole, the absence of a reactive carbanion will also make the reaction more difficult however, in this case it occurs more readily than with other aromatic acid decarboxylases. 

The reactivity of enols was shown by Kresge61 to be very low with little carbanion character. Therefore, upon breaking the carbon-carbon bond in the decarboxylation of these acids, the adjacent leaving group possesses minimal carbanion character and will not be subject to significant carboxylation by carbon dioxide. Alternatively, if decarboxylation leads to the enolate, which has carbanion character, the internal return of C02 would become a competing factor. 

The one-base mechanism is characterized by the retention of the substrate-derived proton in the product (internal retum).30) With this criterion, reactions catalyzed by a-amino-c-caprolactam racemase,323 amino acid racemase of broad specificity from Pseudomonas striata333 have been considered to proceed through the one-base mechanism. However, such internal returns were not observed in the reactions of alanine racemases from K coli B,33) B. stearothermophilus,263 and S. typhirmaium (DadB and /1/r).263 The internal return should not be observed in the two-base mechanism, because the base catalyzing the protonation to the intermediate probably obtains the proton from the solvent. But the failure of the observation of the internal return can be also explained by the single-base mechanism in which exchange of the proton abstracted from the substrate a-carbon with the solvent is much faster than its transfer to the a-carbanion. Therefore, lack of the internal return does not directly indicate the two-base mechanism of the alanine racemase reaction. 

The system is now ready to have the deuterium transfer from the carbon to methoxide ion, kf, and generate a hydrogen-bonded carbanion, HB-d. The internal return step, k j, can compete with any forward reaction and would regenerate the encounter complex EC-d. 

When there is internal return, a deprotonation event escapes detection because exchange does not occur. One experimental test for the occurrence of internal return is racem-ization at chiral carbanionic sites that takes place without exchange. Even racemization cannot be regarded as an absolute measure of the deprotonation rate because, under some conditions, hydrogen-deuterium exchange has been shown to occur with retention of configuration. Owing to these uncertainties about the fate of ion pairs, it is important... 

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