Electrophilic oxygen, description

Many of the properties of phenols reflect the polarization implied by the resonance description The hydroxyl oxygen is less basic and the hydroxyl proton more acidic in phenols than m alcohols Electrophiles attack the aromatic ring of phenols much faster than they attack benzene indicating that the ring especially at the positions ortho and para to the hydroxyl group is relatively electron rich... 

The description of the carbon-oxygen double bond is analogous, but in addition to the cr-bonds there are unshared pairs of electrons on oxygen so that two excited states are possible, n-n and n-n. For n-n excitation the resultant half-vacant orbital on oxygen should possess electrophilic reactivity, and the electron rich -system should have nucleophilic characteristics. 62>... 

This section will cover aspects of monohydride terminal surface reactions that were carried out under free-radical conditions. The description will be circumscribed to the reactions with molecular oxygen and monounsaturated compounds. Mechanistic information for these reactions is scarce mainly due to the complexity of the system, and mechanistic schemes are often proposed in analogy with radical chemistry of organosilane molecules. H—Si(lll) has a band gap of about 1.1 eV while the HOMO LUMO gap in (Me3Si)3SiH is within 8-11 eV and, therefore, has very important consequences for the reactions with nucleophilic and electrophilic species where frontier orbital inter-... 

Extensive studies of AChE have resulted in the purification and amino acid sequencing of the enzyme from several sources as well as the description of its quaternary structure from x-ray crystallographic and molecular modeling studies (38). To understand the mode of action of AChEls, it is necessary to examine the mechanism by which AChE catalyzes hydrolysis of acetylcholine. This enzymatically controlled hydrolysis parallels the two chemical mechanisms for hydrolysis of esters. The first mechanism is acid-catalyzed hydrolysis, in which the initial step involves protonation of the carbonyl oxygen. The transition state is formed by the attack of a molecule of water at the electrophilic carbonyl carbon atom. Collapse of the transition state affords the carboxylic acid and the alcohol (Fig. 12.11). The second mechanism, base-catalyzed hydrolysis, involves the nucleophilic attack ... 

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