1.5- dicarbonyl, from conjugate addition

With unsymmetrical ketones, a mixture of regioisomeric enolates may be formed, resulting in a mixture of Michael adducts. Deprotonation in a protic solvent is reversible and leads predominantly to the thermodynamically favoured, more-substituted enolate. Reaction with a Michael acceptor then gives the product from reaction at the more-substituted side of the ketone carbonyl group. The 1,5-dicarbonyl compound 24 is the major product from conjugate addition of 2-methylcyclohexanone to methyl acrylate using potassium tert-butoxide in the protic solvent tert-butanol (1.39). In contrast, the major product from Michael addition... 

The best Michael reactions are those that take place when a particularly stable enolate ion such as that derived from a /i-keto ester or other 1,3-dicarbonyl compound adds to an unhindered a,/3-unsaturated ketone. Tor example, ethyl acetoacetate reacts with 3-buten-2-one in the presence of sodium ethoxide to yield the conjugate addition product. 

A Michael reaction involves the conjugate addition of a stable enolate ion donor to an o,/3-unsaturated carbonyl acceptor, yielding a 1,5-dicarbonyl product. Usually, the stable enolate ion is derived from a /3-diketone, jS-keto ester, malonic ester, or similar compound. The C—C bond made in the conjugate addition step is the one between the a carbon of the acidic donor and the (3 carbon of the unsaturated acceptor. 

The Michael addition of nitroalkanes to a,P-unsaturated ketones followed by the Nef reaction has been extensively used as a method for the conjugated addition of acyl anions to enones (see Section 6.1, Nef Reaction). This strategy is one of the best methods for the preparation of 1,4-dicarbonyl compounds.156a h Various natural products have been prepared via this route.157 For example, r/.v-jasmone is prepared from readily available materials, as shown in Scheme 4.19.156f... 

However, the reaction is not quite that simple, and to understand and utilize the Claisen reaction we have to consider pAT values again. Loss of ethoxide from the addition anion is not really favourable, since ethoxide is not a particularly good leaving group. This is because ethoxide is a strong base, the conjugate base of a weak acid (see Section 6.1.4). So far then, the reaction will be reversible. What makes it actually proceed further is the fact that ethoxide is a strong base, and able to ionize acids. The ethyl acetoacetate prodnct is a 1,3-dicarbonyl componnd and has relatively acidic protons on the methylene between the two carbonyls (see Section 10.1). With... 

The majority of recent contributions for the conjugate addition of C-H acids to a,p-unsaturated carbonyl compounds catalysed through iminium ion intermediates have come from the laboratories of Jprgensen. The ease with which 1,3-dicarbonyl compounds and nitroalkanes can be deprotonated, together with the soft nature of the nucleophile mean this is a particularly facile reaction which conveniently leads to useful precursors for further synthetic manipulation. 

The Michael reaction is the conjugate addition of a soft enolate, commonly derived from a P-dicarbonyl compound 24, to an acceptor-activated alkene such as enone 41a, resulting in a 1,5-dioxo constituted product 42 (Scheme 8.14) [52]. Traditionally, these reactions are catalyzed by Bronsted bases such as tertiary amines and alkali metal alkoxides and hydroxides. However, the strongly basic conditions are often a limiting factor since they can cause undesirable side- and subsequent reactions, such as aldol cyclizations and retro-Claisen-type decompositions. To address this issue, acid- [53] and metal-catalyzed [54] Michael reactions have been developed in order to carry out the reactions under milder conditions. 

The conjugate addition of carbonyl anions catalysed by thiazolium salts (via umpol-ung) that is fully operative under neutral aqueous conditions has been accomplished. The combination of a-keto carboxylates (157) and thiazolium-derived zwitterions (e.g. 160) in a buffered protic environment (pH 7.2) generates reactive carbonyl anions that readily undergo conjugate additions to substituted o /3-unsaturated 2-acylimidazoles (158) to produce (159). The scope of the reaction has been examined and found to accommodate various a-keto carboxylates and /3-aryl-substituted unsaturated 2-acylimidazoles. The optimum precatalyst for this process is the commercially available thiazolium salt (160), a simple analogue of thiamine diphosphate. In this process, no benzoin products from carbonyl anion dimerization were observed. The resulting 1,4-dicarbonyl compounds (159) can be efficiently converted into esters and amides by way of activation of the A-methylimidazole ring via alkylation.181... 

We met enamines as specific enol equivalents in the last chapter and they are particularly good at conjugate addition. The pyrrolidine enamine from cyclohexanone 41 adds to acrylic esters 42 in conjugate fashion and the first-formed product 43 gives the enamine 44 by proton exchange.4 Acid hydrolysis via the imine salt 45 gives the 1,5-dicarbonyl compound 46. 

A better strategy emerges from disconnection of the six-membered ring 44a. Aldol disconnection reveals a triketone with two 1,4-dicarbonyl relationships 49. An ideal disconnection would correspond to a reagent for the d1 synthon 51 that can do conjugate additions to both 50 and 52. 

Tfce preferred synthetic route to these important intermediates is the Mannich reaction (Chapter 27), The compound is stored as the stable Mannich base and the unstable enone released by elimination of a tertiary amine with mild base, The same conditions are right for this elimination and for conjugate addition, Thus the aw-methylene compounds can be formed in the flask for immediate reaction with the enol(ate) nucleophile, The overall reaction from (3-amino carbonyl to 1,5-dicarbonyl appears to be a substitution but the actual mechanism involves elimination and conjugate addition,... 

These strategies are more difficult to realize with the reagents you have met so far but conjugate addition of a cyanide to an unsaturated carbonyl compound would be an example of the d1 + a3 strategy. We have included these to try to convince you that there is no escape from umpolung in the synthesis of a 1,4-dicarbonyl compound. If you were making this keto-ester you would have to understand two of the three strategies. 

Michael addition of metal enolates to a,/3-unsaturated carbonyls has been intensively studied in recent years and provides an established method in organic synthesis for the preparation of a wide range of 1,5-dicarbonyl compounds (128) under neutral and mild conditions . Metal enolates derived from ketones or esters typically act as Michael donors, and a,-unsaturated carbonyls including enoates, enones and unsaturated amides are used as Michael acceptors. However, reaction between a ketone enolate (125) and an a,/3-unsaturated ester (126) to form an ester enolate (127, equation 37) is not the thermodynamically preferred one, because ester enolates are generally more labile than ketone enolates. Thus, this transformation does not proceed well under thermal or catalytic conditions more than equimolar amounts of additives (mainly Lewis acids, such as TiCU) are generally required to enable satisfactory conversion, as shown in Table 8. Various groups have developed synthons as unsaturated ester equivalents (ortho esters , thioesters ) and /3-lithiated enamines as ketone enolate equivalents to afford a conjugate addition with acceptable yields. 

The Lewis acid-catalyzed conjugate addition of silyl enol ethers to a,y3-unsaturated carbonyl derivatives, the Mukaiyaraa Michael reaction, is known to be a mild, versatile method for carbon-cabon bond formation. Although the development of catalytic asymmetric variants of this process provides access to optically active 1,5-dicarbonyl synthons, few such applications have yet been reported [108], Mukiyama demonstrated asymmetric catalysis with BINOL-Ti oxide prepared from (/-Pr0)2Ti=0 and BINOL and obtained a 1,4-adduct in high % ee (Sch. 43) [109]. The enantioselectiv-ity was highly dependent on the ester substituent of the silyl enol ether employed. Thus the reaction of cyclopentenone with the sterically hindered silyl enol ether derived from 5-diphenylmethyl ethanethioate proceeds highly enantioselectively. Sco-lastico also reported that reactions promoted by TADDOL-derived titanium complexes gave the syn product exclusively, although with only moderate enantioselectiv-ity (Sch. 44) [110]. 

Catalytic multicomponent synthesis of highly substituted pyrroles has been described. A one-pot reaction uses DBU with the commercially available thiazolium salt 513 to produce the necessary nucleophilic zwitterionic catalyst in situ, which promotes a conjugate addition of acylsilanes (sila-Stetter) and unsaturated ketones to generate 1,4-dicarbonyl compounds in situ. Subsequent addition of various amines promotes a Paal-Knorr reaction, affording the desired polysubstituted pyrrole compounds in a one-pot process in moderate to high yields (Scheme 129) <2004OL2465>. Microwave heating dramatically reduced the reaction time (from 16 h to 30 min), but offered no improvement in yields. 

If the 1,5-dicarbonyl compound is required, then an aqueous work-up with either acid or base cleaves the silicon-oxygen bond in the product but the value of silyl enol ethers is that they can undergo synthetically useful reactions other than just hydrolysis. Addition of the silyl enol ether derived from acetophenone (PhCOMe) to a disubstituted enone promoted by titanium tetrachloride is very rapid and gives the diketone product in good yield even though a quaternary carbon atom is created in the conjugate addition. This is a typical example of this very powerful class of conjugate addition reactions. 

The reaction of yne-ones (also synthons for 1,3-dicarbonyl compounds) with 3-amino-enones or 3-amino-acrylates (the Bohlmann-Rahtz reaction) is regioselective, since conjugate addition of the ketone enamine is the first step the intermediates thus produced can be isolated from reactions in ethanol and converted on to the aromatic pyridine Acetic acid or ytterbium triflate give good results. 

Likewise, the lithium enolate 89 reacts with cyclohexenone 90 at -78 °C to give the product of attack at the carbonyl carbon (direct attack) 91. However, warming the reaction mixture to room temperature allows this step to revert to the starting materials, which react again to form the thermodynamically more stable product of conjugate addition 92 [35]. The enolates formed from p-dicarbonyl compounds do not allow the isolation of the product of direct attack because the first step is even more easily reversible in these instances. 

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