Carbon nucleophiles Ester condensations

The carbon nucleophiles in amine-catalyzed reaction conditions are usually rather acidic compounds containing two electron-attracting substituents. Malonic esters, cyanoacetic esters, and cyanoacetamide are examples of compounds which undergo condensation reactions under Knoevenagel conditions.115 Nitroalkanes are also effective nucleophilic reactants. The single nitro group sufficiently activates the a hydrogens to permit deprotonation under the weakly basic conditions. Usually, the product that is isolated is... 

The Mukaiyama reaction is a versatile crossed-aldol reaction that uses a silyl enol ether of an aldehyde, ketone, or ester as the carbon nucleophile and an aldehyde or ketone activated by a Lewis acid as the carbon electrophile. The product is a /1-hydroxy carbonyl compound typical of an aldol condensation. The advantages to this approach are that it is carried out under acidic conditions and elimination does not usually occur. 

So far, we have seen that an enolate anion is able to act as a nucleophile in an SN2 reaction (Sections 20.3 and 20.4) and also in an addition reaction to the carbonyl group of an aldehyde in the aldol condensation (Section 20.5). It also can act as a nucleophile in a substitution reaction with the carbonyl group of an ester as the electrophile. When an ester is treated with a base such as sodium ethoxide, the enolate ion that is produced can react with another molecule of the same ester. The product has the a-carbon of one ester molecule bonded to the carbonyl carbon of a second ester molecule, replacing the alkoxy group. Examples of this reaction, called the Claisen ester condensation, are provided by the following equations ... 

A large number of reactions have been presented in this chapter. However, all of these reactions involve an enolate ion (or a related species) acting as a nucleophile (see Table 20.2). This nucleophile reacts with one of the electrophiles discussed in Chapters 8, 18, and 19 (see Table 20.3). The nucleophile can bond to the electrophilic carbon of an alkyl halide (or sulfonate ester) in an SN2 reaction, to the electrophilic carbonyl carbon of an aldehyde or ketone in an addition reaction (an aldol condensation), to the electrophilic carbonyl carbon of an ester in an addition reaction (an ester condensation) or to the electrophilic /3-carbon of an a,/3-unsaturated compound in a conjugate addition (Michael reaction). These possibilities are summarized in the following equations ... 

Identify the a-carbon for each ester group. Convert one of the a-carbons to an enolate anion and show it adding to the other carbonyl carbon. Because Dieckmann condensations occur with nucleophilic acyl substitution, the —OR group of the carbonyl being attacked Is eliminated from the final product. It often helps to number the atoms in the enolate anion and the ester being attacked. 

Enolate ion formation allows coenzyme A-bound acyl groups to serve as nucleophiles and to react at electrophilic centres. This permits thioesters to participate in the formation or degradation of carbon—carbon linkages by mechanisms analogous to the aldol condensation or more specifically the Qaisen type ester condensation. There are few available mechanisms for carbon—carbon bond formation or deavage which can be employed under biological reaction conditions, and pathways which depend on coenzyme A thioesters for this purpose are widespread. 

Common bases used for this purpose are sodium alkoxides or sodium hydride. The ester enolate, once formed, can act as a carbon nucleophile and add to the carbonyl group of another ester molecule. This reaction is called the Claisen condensation. It is a way of making /3-keto esters. We will use ethyl acetate as an example to see how the reaction works. 

A new synthesis of aldehydes with 2-methyl-2-thiazoline has the advantage of releasing the aldehydes from the thiazolidine intermediate under neutral conditions . Acetylene derivatives can be obtained from aldehydes via dibromomethylene compounds Novel reactions of alkynes with cationoid electrophiles have been published. -Diketones and 2-ketoalkoximes can be obtained by this reaction from acid chlorides and aliphatic nitro compounds respectively Addition of aldehydes to activated carbon-carbon double bonds occurs smoothly in the presence of cyanide ions as catalysts . Poly- -carbonyl compounds have been prepared by condensation of two anions, whereby the enolate salt of a y8-keto ester condenses as an electrophilic anion with strong nucleophiles such as the dianion of benzoylacetone. ... 

Under these circumstances, the overall transformation results in the acylation of the carbon nucleophile. An important group of these reactions involves acylation by esters, in which case the leaving group is alkloy or aryloxy. The self-condensation of esters is known as the Claisen condensation." Ethyl acetoacetate, for example. 

The Claisen condensation is initiated by deprotonation of an ester molecule by sodium ethanolate to give a carbanion that is stabilized, mostly by resonance, as an enolate. This carbanion makes a nucleophilic attack at the partially positively charged carbon atom of the e.ster group, leading to the formation of a C-C bond and the elimination ofan ethanolate ion, This Claisen condensation only proceeds in strongly basic conditions with a pH of about 14. 

The reason for this relative lack of reactivity of 2-methylthiazoIium is probably due to the too-weak nucleophilic character of its carbon-2. For example, any /S-alkoxyalcene (29) derivatives resulting from the condensation of o-ester could never have been isolated, whereas they constitute the essential intermediate step in trimethine syntheses for rings of acidic character (64). However, even if a negative 5-substituent such as ethoxy-carbonyl increases the yield (61) by promoting independently the possible formation of the methylene base, it may be stressed that the presence of this base is not the essential condition of the reaction, since the isolated anhydrobase itself is not reactive toward the o-ester (Scheme 41). 

One such compound, bropirimine (112), is described as an agent which has both antineo-plastic and antiviral activity. The first step in the preparation involves formation of the dianion 108 from the half ester of malonic acid by treatment with butyllithium. Acylation of the anion with benzoyl chloride proceeds at the more nucleophilic carbon anion to give 109. This tricarbonyl compound decarboxylates on acidification to give the beta ketoester 110. Condensation with guanidine leads to the pyrimidone 111. Bromination with N-bromosuccinimide gives bropirimine (112) [24]. 

In the presence of a strong base, the ot carbon of a carboxylic ester can condense with the carbonyl carbon of an aldehyde or ketone to give a P-hydroxy ester, which may or may not be dehydrated to the a,P-unsaturated ester. This reaction is sometimes called the Claisen reaction,an unfortunate usage since that name is more firmly connected to 10-118. In a modem example of how the reaction is used, addition of tert-butyl acetate to LDA in hexane at -78°C gives the lithium salt of ferf-butyl acetate, " (12-21) an enolate anion. Subsequent reaction a ketone provides a simple rapid alternative to the Reformatsky reaction (16-31) as a means of preparing P-hydroxy erf-butyl esters. It is also possible for the a carbon of an aldehyde or ketone to add to the carbonyl carbon of a carboxylic ester, but this is a different reaction (10-119) involving nucleophilic substitution and not addition to a C=0 bond. It can, however, be a side reaction if the aldehyde or ketone has an a hydrogen. 

Organometallic compounds or carbanions undergo a number of reactions in which the carbanion or carbanion-like moiety of the organometallic compound acts as a nucleophilic displacing agent. Examples are the formation of hydrocarbons from alkyl halides, alkyl halides from halogens, and ketones from acid chlorides or esters. The latter two reactions are closely related to the base-catalyzed condensations and are perhaps additions as well as displacement reactions. Related addition reactions are the carbonation of organometallic compounds and the addition to ketones or aldehydes. 

When a new carbon-carbon bond is produced by nucleophilic addition to conjugated systems, the process is called Michael addition. The generalised process involves an a, b-unsaturated compound and a compound containing an active hydrogen attached to a carbon atom (e.g., malonic ester, acetoacetic ester, nitrocompounds, aldehydes, ketones etc.) These are condensed in the presence of a base. The overall reaction and its mechanism can be represented as follows ... 

There are many important [5 + 1] two-bond formation heterocyclic syntheses and in certain instances this approach constitutes the method of choice for the preparation of particular classes of heterocycle. Where a carbon atom constitutes the one-atom fragment it is almost invariably present in the form of an electrophilic species such as an aldehyde, carboxylic acid, ketone, ester, acid chloride, urea, etc., and fundamentally condensation consists of reaction of this electrophilic species with a 1,5-dinucleophilic reagent. Where the one-atom fragment is either nitrogen, oxygen or sulfur then the heteroatom may function either as a nucleophile or, in the case of nitrogen and sulfur, also as an electrophile. Almost... 

A similar type of acid-catalyzed condensation of aldehydes with 4-methylene-2-oxetanone (diketene), giving 4-oxo-6-methyl-l,3-dioxins, has been patented (73GEP2149650). However, other work has established that <5-hydroxy-/3-keto acids or unsaturated keto acids are formed as the principal products (equation 24) (78CPB3877, 78CL409). The latter reaction probably involves electrophilic attack of the protonated aldehyde on the nucleophilic exocyclic methylene carbon atom of the diketone. A closely related reaction of acetals with diketene, catalyzed by titanium tetrachloride, gives the corresponding <5-alkoxy-/3-keto esters (74CL1189). 

The enolate anion attacks the carbonyl carbon of a second molecule of ester and gives a P-ketoester. Thus, the Claisen condensation is a nucleophilic acyl substitution reaction. Eor example, two molecules of ethyl acetate condense together to form the enolate of ethyl acetoacetate, which upon addition of an acid produces ethyl acetoacetate (P-ketoester). 

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