Chiral compounds configuration

The presence of asymmetric C atoms in a molecule may, of course, be indicated by diastereotopic shifts and absolute configurations may, as already shown, be determined empirically by comparison of diastereotopic shifts However, enantiomers are not differentiated in the NMR spectrum. The spectrum gives no indication as to whether a chiral compound exists in a racemic form or as a pure enantiomer. 

Although unsynunetrically substituted amines are chiral, the configuration is not stable because of rapid inversion at nitrogen. The activation energy for pyramidal inversion at phosphorus is much higher than at nitrogen, and many optically active phosphines have been prepared. The barrier to inversion is usually in the range of 30-3S kcal/mol so that enantiomerically pure phosphines are stable at room temperature but racemize by inversion at elevated tempeiatuies. Asymmetrically substituted tetracoordinate phosphorus compounds such as phosphonium salts and phosphine oxides are also chiral. Scheme 2.1 includes some examples of chiral phosphorus compounds. 

The Cahn-Ingold-Prelog system is unambiguous and easily applicable in most cases. Whether to call an enantiomer (R) or (S) does not depend on correlations, but the configuration must be known before the system can be applied, and this does depend on correlations. The Cahn-Ingold-Prelog system has also been extended to chiral compounds that do not contain chiral atoms.A series of new rules have been proposed to address the few cases where the rules can be ambiguous, as in cyclophanes and other systems. ... 

For a discussion of these rules, as well as for a review of methods for establishing configurations of chiral compounds not containing chiral atoms, see Krow, G. Top. Stereochem., 1970, 5, 31. 

Chiral compounds are sometimes configurationally stable as solids and configurationally labile in solution. When optically active samples of these deriv-... 

Meso compound A symmetrical compound containing two chiral centres configured so that the chirality of one of the centres is equal and opposite to the other. Such internal compensation means that these compounds have no overall effect on polarised light (e.g., meso tartaric acid). 

As mentioned in the introduction, the first empirical correlation between the absolute configuration of dopants and the handedness of induced cholesterics was proposed in 1975.20 The first attempt to find a general correlation was a few years later Krabbe et al.58 related the sense of the cholesteric to a stereochemical descriptor of the dopant based on the effective volume of the substituents and listed many compounds following this rule. However, exceptions were described at that time,59 and, furthermore, this approach neglects the role of the structure of the nematic solvent in determining the sense of the cholesteric. It is well known that chiral compounds may induce cholesterics of opposite handedness in different nematics.60,61... 

Optical activity also manifests itself in small differences in the molar extinction coefficients el and er of an enantiomer toward the right and left circularly polarized light. The small differences in e are expressed by the term molecular ellipticity [9 J = 3300(el — r). As a result of the differences in molar extinction coefficients, a circularly polarized beam in one direction is absorbed more than the other. Molecular ellipticity is dependent on temperature, solvent, and wavelength. The wavelength dependence of ellipticity is called circular dichroism (CD). CD spectroscopy is a powerful method for studying the three-dimensional structures of optically active chiral compounds, for example, for studying their absolute configurations or preferred conformations.57... 

Woerdenbag et al also evaluated the influence of chiral center configurations present in artemisinin (1) structure on the proliferation of Ehrlich ascites tumor (ETA) cells. Compounds 11-hydroxyartemisinin (47) and 11-hydroxy-11-epi-artemisinin (48) (Fig. 4) were synthesized and the... 

Reetz and coworkers developed a highly efficient method for screening of enantioselectivity of asymmetrically catalyzed reactions of chiral or prochiral substrates using ESI-MS [60]. This method is based on the use of isotopically labeled substrates in the form of pseudo-enantiomers or pseudo-prochiral compounds. Pseudo-enantiomers are chiral compounds which are characterized by different absolute configurations and one of them is isotopically labeled. With these labeled compounds two different stereochemical processes are possible. The first is a kinetic separation of a racemic mixture, the second the asymmetric conversion of prochiral substrates with enantiotopic groups. The conversion can be monitored by measuring the relative amounts of substrates or products by electrospray mass spectrometry. Since only small amounts of sample are required for this method, reactions are easily carried out in microtiter plates. The combination of MS and the use of pseudo-enantiomers can be used for the investigation of different kinds of asymmetric conversion as shown in Fig. 3 [60]. 

The naturally occurring compounds in the flavan, flavan-3-ol, flavan-4-ol, flavan-3,4-diol, and proanthocyanidin classes, together with their plant sources, are listed in Table 11.2-Table 11.17. The lists are confined to new compounds reported in the post-1992 period or those that have been overlooked in the 1994 review, and therefore must be considered in conjunction with the corresponding tables of the Porter reviews to be comprehensive. Since many of the monomeric analogs have been published under trivial names these will be retained to facilitate electronic literature searches. Unfortunately, a considerable number of these potentially chiral compounds have been reported without assignment of absolute configuration, and are hence presented as such. 

The unambiguous determination of enantiomeric purity1-8 and absolute configuration (see Section A.4.) is an important analytical task in the synthesis, characterization and use of nonracemic chiral compounds. Due to the continued interest in this field, new procedures and improvements to the existing methods are frequently appearing in the literature. Recent papers relevant to this section are found in references 205 207, while references 208-220 contain important review and research articles. 

An example is the addition of hydrogen chloride to 4-methylcyclohexylidene acetic acid, a chiral compound with a stereogenic axis. The configuration of the products was deduced from NOE-difference data29. 

Assignment of the absolute configuration of a chiral compound containing a stereogenic axis, rather than a stereogenic center, by chemical means is very often achieved by correlation with a centrochiral compound in one of the following ways ... 

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