Crotonaldehyde, structure

Figure 6A appears to match well Figure 7A which provides evidence that most of the (M- methyl) ions formed at about 10 ° °s have the protonated crotonaldehyde structure, i.e. ion [4] in Scheme 2. 

A. Greenberg and T. A. Stevenson, Molecular Structure and Energetics Studies of Organic Molecules (Eds. J. F. Liebman and A. Greenberg), VCH, Deerfield Beach, 1986. See also the discussion in J. F. Liebman and R. M. Pollack, in The Chemistry ofEnones, Part 1 (Eds. S. Patai and Z. Rappoport), Wiley, New York, 1989 wherein the resonance energy of crotonaldehyde was shown to be less than that of piperylene while the rotational barriers are in the reverse order. 

The other compound, called Zl, which was much more acid-labile, was hydrolyzed to equimolar amounts of pyruvate and shikimate, and was tentatively assigned the structure of shikimate 3- or 5-enolpyruvate ether. In a more recent study, it was found that the barium salt of Zl does not absorb in the carbonyl region of the infrared absorption spectrum (no ester structure), and that it has a strong band at 8.2iu characteristic of a vinyl ether. It is oxidized very rapidly by periodate, giving rise to an unstable compound with maximum absorption at 235 m i ( = 4000). A similar unstable chromophore, most likely having the structure XVII, was produced by periodate oxidation of shikimate 3-phosphate but not of shikimate 5-phosphate. (3-Methyl-crotonaldehyde shows Xm 235, t = 6700. ) These observations suggest that Zl is shikimate 3-enolpyruvate ether (XVIII). 

Trans-2-Butenal (trans-Crotonaldehyde). Pitts and coworkers (2,58) investigated the photolysis of trans-crotonalde-hyde in the gas phase to correlate the structural effects on photodecomposition and reactivity of a, (5-unsaturated aldehydes. As in the case of acrolein, this molecule showed an unusual stability, except polymerization being the only significant reaction at 265-254 nm and 25°C (2). Some reactions giving... 

The stereoselective synthesis of unsaturated oxetanes has recently been achieved by Feigenbaum and coworkers.Previous studies have indicated that photochemical cis-trans isomerization of enals is rapid and results in the formation of equivalent amounts of stereoisomeric alkene adducts. " For example, irradiation of rran.r-crotonaldehyde and 2,6-dimethylfuran produced a 1 1 mixture of alkenic isomers (174) and (175) in 64% yield. Irradiation of 4-trimethylsilylbutyn-2-one and furan provided with S 1 stereoselectivity the bicyclic oxetane (176) in which the methyl group occupies the exo position, presumably because of the small steric requirement of the triple bond. Desilyation of the protected al-kyne produced an alkynic oxetane which was hydrogenated under Lindlar conditions to bicyclic vinyl-oxetane (177) attempts to use the unprotected butyn-2-one gave low isolated yields of oxetane because of extensive polymerization. The stereochemical outcome thus broadens previous alkynyloxetane syn-theses and makes possible the preparation of new oxetane structures that may be synthetically useful. 

The process is quite general for simple dienes and aldehydes. For example, the reaction of acrolein with cyclopentadiene, cyclohexadiene, or 2,3-dimethyl-l,3-butadiene gives cycloadducts with 8(F-84 % ee and exolendo = 12/88-< 1/99. The a-substituent on the dienophile increases the enantioselectivity (acrolein compared with methacro-lein). When there is /3-substitution in the dienophile, as in crotonaldehyde, the cycloadduct is almost racemic. On the other hand, for a substrate with substituents at both a and ji positions, high ee is observed, as for 2-methylcrotonaldehyde and cyclopentadiene (90 % ee, exolendo = 97/3). The active boron catalyst is beheved to have the structure shown in Eq. (8), with a five-membered ring and a free carboxyl group. The latter seems not to be crucial for the enantioselectivity because eomparable results are obtained when the carboxylic group is transformed into an ester. 

The boron-substituent-dependent enantioselectivity of CAB-catalyzed Diels-Alder reactions has been studied as a first step toward obtaining mechanistic information on the sp -sp conformational preferences in a, d-enals, where the possibility of s-cis or s-trans conformers exists in the transition-state assembly of Diels-Alder reaction catalyzed by Lewis acid [12]. a-Substituted a,P-ena s (e.g. methacrolein) favors an s-trans conformation in the transition-state assembly irrespective of the steric features of the boron substituent. On the other hand, the sp -sp conformational preference of a-unsubstituted a,/3-enals (acrolein and crotonaldehyde) can be reversed by altering the structure of the boron substituent an s-trans conformation is preferred when the substituent on the boron is small (H, C=CBu), whereas an s-cis conformation is preferred when the substituent is bulky (o-PhOC(jH4). 

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