Catalysed Reaction

Lewis-acid catalysed decarboxylatiom. Later studies have focnsed on the effects of ligands on the efficiency of the catalysed reaction" This topic will be discussed extensively in Chapter 3. 

The rate constants for the catalysed Diels-Alder reaction of 2.4g with 2.5 (Table 2.3) demonstrate that the presence of the ionic group in the dienophile does not diminish the accelerating effect of water on the catalysed reaction. Comparison of these rate constants with those for the nonionic dienophiles even seems to indicate a modest extra aqueous rate enhancement of the reaction of 2.4g. It is important to note here that no detailed information has been obtained about the exact structure of the catalytically active species in the oiganic solvents. For example, ion pairing is likely to occur in the organic solvents. 

The mecluLnism of this base-catalysed reaction probably involves the intermediate formation of an aldol  

Scheme 2.2. Lewis-acid catalysed reactions in pure water.

Table 2.10. Substituent effect on the selectivity of the Cu catalysed reaction of 2.4 with 2.5 in water at25°C.

Table 1.1. Apparent second-order rate constants for the Cii" -ion catalysed reaction of 2.4a and 2.4g with 2.5 and ratios of the rate constants for the catalysed and uncatalysed reaction in different solvents at 25 °C.

The use of dienophile 5.1 also allows study of the effect of micelles on the Lewis-acid catalysed reaction. These studies are described in Section 5.2.2. and represent the first in-depth study of Lewis-acid catalysis in conjunction with micellar catalysis , a combination that has very recently also found application in synthetic organic chemistry .  

Most reactions in cells are carried out by enzymes [1], In many instances the rates of enzyme-catalysed reactions are enhanced by a factor of a million. A significantly large fraction of all known enzymes are proteins which are made from twenty naturally occurring amino acids. The amino acids are linked by peptide bonds to fonn polypeptide chains. The primary sequence of a protein specifies the linear order in which the amino acids are linked. To carry out the catalytic activity the linear sequence has to fold to a well defined tliree-dimensional (3D) stmcture. In cells only a relatively small fraction of proteins require assistance from chaperones (helper proteins) [2]. Even in the complicated cellular environment most proteins fold spontaneously upon synthesis. The detennination of the 3D folded stmcture from the one-dimensional primary sequence is the most popular protein folding problem. 

Studies of the Diels-Alder reaction of the ionic dienophile 2.4g have demonstrated that the acpieous acceleration of the uncatalysed reaction as well as the catalysed reaction is not significantly affected by the presence of the ionic group at a site remote from the reaction centre. 

A large number of mechanistic studies have established the mechanism of the catalysed reactions, which is 

Berezin and co-workers have analysed in detail the kinetics of bimolecular micelle-catalysed reactions ". They have derived the following equation, relating the apparent rate constant for the reaction of A with B to the concentration of surfactant  

The enhanced binding predicts a catalytic potential for these solutions and prompted us to investigate the influence of the different types of micelles on the rate of the copper-ion catalysed reaction. Table 5.5 summarises the results, which are in perfect agreement with the conclusions drawn from the complexation studies. 

The equilibrium constants obtained using the metal-ion induced shift in the UV-vis absorption spectrum are in excellent agreement with the results of the Lineweaver-Burke analysis of the rate constants at different catalyst concentrations. For the copper(II)ion catalysed reaction of 2.4a with 2.5 the latter method gives a value for of 432 versus 425 using the spectroscopic method. 

To the best of our knowledge the data in Table 3.2 constitute the first example of enantio selectivity in a chiral Lewis-acid catalysed organic transformation in aqueous solution. Note that for the majority of enantioselective Lewis-acid catalysed reactions, all traces of water have to be removed from the 

CF3CO2H. Colourless liquid, b.p. 72-5 C, fumes in air. Trifluoroacetic acid is the most important halogen-substituted acetic acid. It is a very strong acid (pK = o y) and used extensively for acid catalysed reactions, especially ester cleavage in peptide synthesis. 

In summary, the effects of a number of important parameters on the catalysed reaction between 2.4 and 2.5 have been examined, representing the first detailed study of Lewis-acid catalysis of a Diels-Alder reaction in water. Crucial for the success of Lewis-acid catalysis of this reaction is the bidentate character of 2.4. In Chapter 4 attempts to extend the scope of Lewis-acid catalysis of Diels-Alder reactions in water beyond the restriction to bidentate substrates will be presented. 

In a Lewis-acid catalysed Diels-Alder reaction, the first step is coordination of the catalyst to a Lewis-basic site of the reactant. In a typical catalysed Diels-Alder reaction, the carbonyl oxygen of the dienophile coordinates to the Lewis acid. The most common solvents for these processes are inert apolar liquids such as dichloromethane or benzene. Protic solvents, and water in particular, are avoided because of their strong interactions wifti the catalyst and the reacting system. Interestingly, for other catalysed reactions such as hydroformylations the same solvents do not give problems. This paradox is a result of the difference in hardness of the reactants and the catalyst involved 

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