Carboxylic acid amid aldehydes, synthesis with

The epoxide can be prepared from an alkene and the amide from a carboxylic acid. The new target. 2-ethyl-2-hexenoic acid, has a CC double bond in conjugation with the carbonyl group of the carboxylic acid. Whenever a compound with an ,/3-unsaturated carbonyl group is encountered, it is worthwhile to consider the possibility of using an aldol condensation (see Section 20.5) or a related reaction to prepare it. To examine this possibility, the aldehyde that will provide the carboxylic acid upon oxidation is disconnected at the double bond. Because both fragments produced by this disconnection are the same, it is apparent that an aldol condensation of butanal can be employed to prepare this compound. The synthesis was accomplished as shown in Figure 23.5. 

The ideal hydride to effect reduction of acids to aldehydes does not exist, nor is it axiomatic that the ideal reagent should react only with carboxylic acids because, in synthesis, the carboxylic acid is usually already protected in some way and it may be more convenient to reduce an amide rather than the free acid. Probably, for most organic chemists, the ideal reagent would be stable, nontoxic, cheap, easy to obtain, not reactive to air or water, would reduce only the group it was needed for and would present no difficulties on work-up a formidable ideal. 

In the final stages of the total synthesis of ustiloxin D, M.M. Joullie and co-workers had to install the amide side-chain onto the already assembled macrocycle.To achieve this goal, the macrocyclic primary alcohol was treated with the Dess-Martin periodinane to generate the corresponding aldehyde, which was subsequently treated with sodium chlorite to afford the carboxylic acid. The carboxylic acid was then coupled with the benzyl ester of glycine to complete the installation of the side-chain in 66% yield for three steps. 

Oxidation is the first step for producing molecules with a very wide range of functional groups because oxygenated compounds are precursors to many other products. For example, alcohols may be converted to ethers, esters, alkenes, and, via nucleophilic substitution, to halogenated or amine products. Ketones and aldehydes may be used in condensation reactions to form new C-C double bonds, epoxides may be ring opened to form diols and polymers, and, finally, carboxylic acids are routinely converted to esters, amides, acid chlorides and acid anhydrides. Oxidation reactions are some of the largest scale industrial processes in synthetic chemistry, and the production of alcohols, ketones, aldehydes, epoxides and carboxylic acids is performed on a mammoth scale. For example, world production of ethylene oxide is estimated at 58 million tonnes, 2 million tonnes of adipic acid are made, mainly as a precursor in the synthesis of nylons, and 8 million tonnes of terephthalic acid are produced each year, mainly for the production of polyethylene terephthalate) [1]. 

The ease of the Strecker synthesis from aldehydes makes a-aminonitriles an attractive and important route to a-amino acids. Fortunately, the microbial world offers a number of enzymes for carrying out the necessary conversions, some of them highly stereoselective. Nitrilases catalyze a direct conversion of nitrile into carboxylic acid (Equation (11)), whereas nitrile hydratases catalyze formation of the amide, which can then be hydrolyzed to the carboxylic acid in a second step (Equation (12)). In a recent survey, with a view to bioremediation and synthesis, Brady et al have surveyed the ability of a wide range of bacteria and yeasts to grow on diverse nitriles and amides as sole nitrogen source. This provides a rich source of information on enzymes for future application. 

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