Carbon dioxide, addition from decarboxylation

The chloride (60 1) and 2 volumes of water were mixed ready for subsequent addition of alkali to effect controlled hydrolysis. Before alkali was added, the internal temperature rose from 15 to 25° during 30 min, and then to 35°C in 5 min, when gas was suddenly evolved. This was attributed to the effect of liberated hydrochloric acid causing autocatalytic acceleration of the hydrolysis and then rapid release of carbon dioxide arising from decarboxylation of the carbamic acid. Hydrolysis by addition of the chloride to excess alkali would prevent the gas evolution. 

In fermentation no oxygen is used, so that there is no question as to permeability to oxygen. Glucose, provided in the medium, must permeate the yeast cell before metabolism starts. Metabolism, probably by means of several steps leads to the liberation of carbon dioxide presumably by decarboxylation. To be measured, this carbon dioxide must pass out through the plasma membrane and be freed as a gas from the medium (see Nord and Weichherz, 64). The very great permeability to carbon dioxide of all or most of all the studied types of plasma membrane leads to the conclusion that this step has no measurable influence. The liberation of carbon dioxide from even saturated solutions has been thought to require the use of special methods, such as the addition of large amounts of citric acid as Meyerhof advocates (53). Further study of this step is desirable. 

In this type of spin traps, 5,5-dimethyl-l-pyrroline-Af-oxide (DMPO) deserves particular mention. DMPO is widely employed as a spin trap in the detection of transient radicals or ion-radicals in chemical and biological systems (see, e.g., Siraki et al. 2007). Characteristic ESR spectra arising from the formation of spin adducts are used for identification of specific spin species. In common opinion, such identification is unambiguous. However, in reactions with superoxide ion (Villamena et al. 2004, 2007b), carbon dioxide anion-radical (Villamena et al. 2006), or carbonate anion-radical (Villamena et al. 2007a), this spin trap gives rise to two adducts. Let us consider the case of carbonate anion-radical. The first trapped product arises from direct addition of carbonate anion-radical, second adduct arises from partial decarboxylation of the first one. Scheme 4.25 illustrates such reactions based on the example of carbonate anion-radical. 

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. 

Pyrazines are formed from transamination reactions, in addition to carbon dioxide and formaldehyde. A requirement is that the carbonyl compound contains a dione and the amino group is alpha to the carboxyl group (16). If the hydrogen on the ct-carbon oI the amino acid is substituted, a ketone is produced. Newell (17) initially proposed a pyrazine formation mechanism between sugar and amino acid precursors. (See Figure 3). The Schiff base cation is formed by addition of the amino acid to the anomeric portion of the aldo-hexose, with subsequent losses of vater and a hydroxyl ion. Decarboxylation forms an imine which can hydrolyze to an aldehyde and a dienamine. Enolization yields a ketoamine, vhich dissociates to amino acetone and glyceraldehyde. 2,5-Dimethylpyrazine is formed by the condensation of the tvo molecules of amino acetone. 

More carbon dioxide is formed during polyamidation at high temperatures than would be expected from the simple cleavages just described. Most likely this additional carbon dioxide is formed by decarboxylation of acid-terminated polymer chains. 

The benzyl radical might be formed by abstraction of hydrogen from the carboxyl group and decarboxylation of the acyloxy radical (PhCHs.COaH- PhOHz.COa- PhCHs. + COa), but the effect of pH on the observed spectra, considered in the light of the results already discussed for the behaviour of glycol with the titanous-peroxide system, reveals a more likely mechanism namely, that addition of hydroxyl to an aromatic carbon atom is followed, in sufficiently acidic media, by the elimination of hydroxide ion from the ring concerted with the loss of carbon dioxide and a proton. A convenient representation, in the case of an initial reaction at the para position, is as follows ... 

Cyclopropane-1,1-dicarboxylic acid (30a) reacted with hydrobromic acid to (2-bro-moethyl)malonic acid (31a) . In a similar reaction, ethyl 1-acetylcyclopropane-l-carboxylate (31b) ( C enriched) was converted to 5-bromopentan-2-one upon treatment with hydrobromic acid and decarboxylation." In 2-benzoyl-3-phenylcyclopropane-1,1-dicarboxylic acid (31c), two different activating functions are present and can influence the addition of hydrogen bromide. In fact, products arising from the cleavage of either bond that link the phenyl-substituted carbon were isolated. Both primary products had lost hydrogen bromide and carbon dioxide. 

It should also be noted that decarboxylation of / -oxo acids is subject to specific catalysis by primary amines as well as to general catalysis. For example, the very smooth decarboxylation of 2,2-dimethylacetoacetic acid in water is uninfluenced by addition of a secondary or tertiary amine but its rate is increased by a factor of 10 on addition of aniline. The explanation lies in the fact that primary amines can react to form / -imino acids, whose imino-nitro-gen atom, being considerably more strongly basic than the ketonic oxygen atom, causes almost complete transfer of the proton from the carboxyl group, and it is this transfer that initiates the decomposition. A further example is the violent decomposition to acetone and carbon dioxide that occurs when a small amount of aniline is added to acetonedicarboxylic acid. 

In addition to the desired product, route C produces hydrogen, sodium chloride and additional ammonia (from quenching of the sodium amide with ammonium chloride), zinc and copper hydroxides from the reduction (for simplicity we will assume one mole of each, and no other by-products), one third of a mole of phosphorous acid, sodium bromide, ethanol (from the ester hydrolysis) and carbon dioxide (from the decarboxylation). The molecular weights involved are therefore 126, 1,... 

The oxidation product has been isolated as its 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazone and corresponds with -keto-6-aminovaleric acid. Putrescine, arginine, Manske s 1 (+) acetylornithine (118) and other related amino acids are oxidized much less readily if at all. The same authors have extracted an ornithine dehydrogenase from the young roots of Datura tatula. It requires the cooperation of a coenzyme not yet identified, and appears unable to oxidize putrescine and amino acids other than ornithine and to a lesser extent glutamic. Either of these systems, or the two linked into a H-transfer chain, would seem able to catalyze the oxidation of ornithine in the living tissues. No carbon dioxide was released from ornithine by the poly-phenolase system but on addition of an unwashed belladonna tissue-suspension carbon dioxide was liberated, presumably by decarboxylation of the a-keto-5-aminovaleric acid formed by the oxidation. 

The preparation of ketones in particular of asymetrically substituted ketones from aldehydes is desirable since the latter are readily available, for example via the oxo-synthesis. Isomerizations of this type, for example over catalysts of mixed oxides containing tin, molybdenum and copper, are known. The disadvantages here are that only low selectivities are achieved at satisfactory conversions, and the best results with regard to selectivity and catalyst life can be obtained only with the addition of steam. Therefor, in the industrial production of asymmetrically substituted ketones, it was necessary to use the condensation of different organic acids with decarboxylation. In this process, the inevitable production of symmetrically substituted ketones and of carbon dioxide is a disadvantage. ATdol condensation with subsequent hydrogenation is another possibility but requires very often two reaction stages. 

---