Coordinated ligands Decarboxylation

Radical initiated decarboxylation appears to have considerable scope in organometallic synthesis, especially where the incoming radical is part of a coordinated ligand. 

Enhanced decarboxylation in polar solvents may be due to stabilization of polar transition states and/or solvent coordination to the metal (20). Coordination of solvent or ligands may aid decarboxylation by weakening metal-oxygen bonding (10). It also reduces the electrophilicity of the metal, the consequences of which are considered later. 

A typical chemical system is the oxidative decarboxylation of malonic acid catalyzed by cerium ions and bromine, the so-called Zhabotinsky reaction this reaction in a given domain leads to the evolution of sustained oscillations and chemical waves. Furthermore, these states have been observed in a number of enzyme systems. The simplest case is the reaction catalyzed by the enzyme peroxidase. The reaction kinetics display either steady states, bistability, or oscillations. A more complex system is the ubiquitous process of glycolysis catalyzed by a sequence of coordinated enzyme reactions. In a given domain the process readily exhibits continuous oscillations of chemical concentrations and fluxes, which can be recorded by spectroscopic and electrometric techniques. The source of the periodicity is the enzyme phosphofructokinase, which catalyzes the phosphorylation of fructose-6-phosphate by ATP, resulting in the formation of fructose-1,6 biphosphate and ADP. The overall activity of the octameric enzyme is described by an allosteric model with fructose-6-phosphate, ATP, and AMP as controlling ligands. 

Catalytic decarboxylation processes occur in aliphatic keto acids in which the keto group is in an a-position to one carboxyl group and in a P-relationship to another. Thus, the normal decarboxylation of a p-keto acid is facilitated by metal coordination to the a-keto acid moiety. The most-studied example is oxaloacetic acid and it has been shown that its decarboxylation is catalyzed by many metals following the general order Ca2+ < Mn2+ < Co2+ < Zn2+ < Ni2+ < Cu2+ < Fe3+ < Al3"1".66 67 The overall rate constants can be correlated with the stability constants of 1 1 complexes of oxalic acid rather than oxaloacetic acid, as the uncoordinated carboxylate anion is essential for the decarboxylation. The generally accepted mechanism is shown in Scheme 15. Catalysis can be increased by the introduction of x-bonding ligands, which not only increase the... 

The production of C02 involves activation of CO by coordination to a Rh(III) center, followed by attack of water to form a transient hydroxy-carbonyl species. This species decarboxylates to yield a Rh(I) intermediate that rapidly forms RhI2(CO)2. If the dominant Rh(III) species under 0.5-1.0 atm of CO is Dmy-RhI4(CO)2, the approximate first-order dependence on CO pressure indicates equilibrium or transient formation of a tricarbonyl, possibly RhI3(CO)3, in which the CO ligands are sufficiently activated to facilitate ready attack by water. 

Recent model studies strongly support the proposed mechanism. The first crystal structures of Fe(II) complexed to benzoylformate show that an a-keto acid can coordinate to the iron as either a monodentate or didentate ligand [236]. Exposure of these [Fe(II)(L)(bf)]+ complexes (L = tmpa or 6-Me3-tmpa) to 02 results in the quantitative conversion of benzoylformate to benzoic acid and C02, modeling the oxidative decarboxylation reaction characteristic of this class of enzymes. As with the enzymes, the use of 1802 in the model studies results in the incorporation of the label into the benzoate product. For [Fe(6-Me3-tmpa)(bf)]+, the rate of the oxidative decarboxylation increases as the substituent of the benzoylformate becomes more electron-withdrawing, affording a Hammett p of +1.07. This suggests that the oxidative decarboxylation involves a nucleophilic attack, most plausibly by the iron-bound 02, on the keto carbon of benzoylformate to initiate decarboxylation as proposed in Figure 27. 

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