Enolate anions from aldehydes

The a-hydrogens of carboxylic acid derivatives show enhanced acidity, as do those of aldehydes and ketones, and for the same reasons, that the carbonyl group stabilizes the conjugate base. Thus, we can generate enolate anions from carboxylic acid derivatives and use these as nucleophiles in much the same way as we have already seen with enolate anions from aldehydes and ketones. 

This chapter will discuss carbanion-like reactions that utilize enolate anions. The acid-base reactions used to form enolate anions will be discussed. Formation of enolate anions from aldehyde, ketones, and esters will lead to substitution reactions, acyl addition reactions, and acyl substitution reactions. Several classical named reactions that arise from these three fundamental reactions of enolate anions are presented. In addition, phosphonium salts wiU be prepared from alkyl halides and converted to ylids, which react with aldehydes or ketones to form alkenes. These ylids are treated as phosphorus-stabilized car-banions in terms of their reactivity. 

Nucleophilic addition of an enolate anion from a carboxylic acid derivative onto an aldehyde or ketone is simply an aldol-type reaction (see Section 10.3). 

It is conceptually easier to consider initially the aldol reaction rather than the reverse aldol reaction. This involves generating an enolate anion from the dihydroxyacetone phosphate by removing a proton from the position a to the ketone group. This enolate anion then behaves as a nucleophile towards the aldehyde group of glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate, and an addition reaction occurs, which is completed by abstraction of a proton, typically from solvent. In the reverse reaction, the leaving group would be the enolate anion of dihydroxyacetone phosphate. 

The key step in a basealdol reaction is nucleophilic addition of the enolate anion from one carbonyl-containing molecule to the carbonyl group of another carbonyl-containing molecule to form a tetrahedral carbonyl addition intermediate. This mechanism is illustrated by the aldol reaction between two molecules of acetaldehyde. Notice that OH is a true catalyst An OH is used in Step 1, but another OH is generated in Step 3. Notice also the parallel between Step 2 of the aldol reaction and the reaction of Grignard reagents with aldehydes and ketones (Section 12.5) and the first step of their reaction with esters (Section 14.7). Each type of reaction involves the addition of a carbon nucleophile to the carbonyl carbon of another molecule. 

An aldol reaction is the addition of an enolate anion from one aldehyde or ketone to the carbonyl carbon of another aldehyde or ketone to form a /3-hydroxyaldehyde or J3- hyd roxyketon e. 

With a substantially stronger base, the formation of an enolate anion from an aldehyde, a ketone, or an ester can be driven to completion without an additional electron-withdrawing group. A commonly used base for this purpose is lithium diiso-propylamide (LDA). 

Inductive and resonance stabilization of carbanions derived by proton abstraction from alkyl substituents a to the ring nitrogen in pyrazines and quinoxalines confers a degree of stability on these species comparable with that observed with enolate anions. The resultant carbanions undergo typical condensation reactions with a variety of electrophilic reagents such as aldehydes, ketones, nitriles, diazonium salts, etc., which makes them of considerable preparative importance. 

A common procedure in C-C-bond formation is the aldol addition of enolates derived from carboxylic acid derivatives with aldehydes to provide the anion of the [5-hydroxy carboxylic acid derivative. If one starts with an activated acid derivative, the formation of a [Mac lone can follow. This procedure has been used by the group of Taylor [137] for the first synthesis of the l-oxo-2-oxa-5-azaspiro[3.4]octane framework. Schick and coworkers have utilized the method for their assembly of key intermediates for the preparation of enzyme inhibitors of the tetrahydrolipstatin and tetrahydroesterastin type [138]. Romo and coworkers used a Mukaiyama aldol/lac-tonization sequence as a concise and direct route to 3-lactones of type 2-253, starting from different aldehydes 2-251 and readily available thiopyridylsilylketenes 2-252 (Scheme 2.60) [139]. 

The Mannich reaction is best discussed via an example. A mixture of dimethylamine, formaldehyde and acetone under mild acidic conditions gives N,N-dimethyl-4-aminobutan-2-one. This is a two-stage process, beginning with the formation of an iminium cation from the amine and the more reactive of the two carbonyl compounds, in this case the aldehyde. This iminium cation then acts as the electrophile for addition of the nucleophile acetone. Now it would be nice if we could use the enolate anion as the nucleophile, as in the other reactions we have looked at, but under the mild acidic conditions we cannot have an anion, and the nucleophile must be portrayed as the enol tautomer of acetone. The addition is then unspectacular, and, after loss of a proton from the carbonyl, we are left with the product. 

Whereas the pATa for the a-protons of aldehydes and ketones is in the region 17-19, for esters such as ethyl acetate it is about 25. This difference must relate to the presence of the second oxygen in the ester, since resonance stabilization in the enolate anion should be the same. To explain this difference, overlap of the non-carbonyl oxygen lone pair is invoked. Because this introduces charge separation, it is a form of resonance stabilization that can occur only in the neutral ester, not in the enolate anion. It thus stabilizes the neutral ester, reduces carbonyl character, and there is less tendency to lose a proton from the a-carbon to produce the enolate. Note that this is not a new concept we used the same reasoning to explain why amides were not basic like amines (see Section 4.5.4). 

An enolate anion generated from a carboxylic acid derivative may be used in the same sorts of nucleophilic reactions that we have seen with aldehyde and ketone systems. It should be noted, however, that the base used to generate the enolate anion must be chosen carefully. If sodium hydroxide were used, then hydrolysis of the carboxylic derivative to the acid (see Section 7.9.2) would compete with enolate anion formation. However, the problem is avoided by using the same base, e.g. ethoxide, as is present in the ester... 

Now this is exactly the same situation we encountered when we compared the reactivity of aldehydes and ketones with that of carboxylic acid derivatives (see Section 7.8). The net result here is acylation of the nucleophile, and in the case of acylation of enolate anions, the reaction is termed a Claisen reaction. It is important not to consider aldol and Claisen reactions separately, but to appreciate that the initial addition is the same, and differences in products merely result from the absence or presence... 

One of the most important reactions of aldehydes and ketones is the Aldol condensation. In this reaction, an enolate anion is formed from the reaction between an aldehyde or a ketone and an aqueous base, e.g. NaOH. The enolate anion reacts with another molecule of aldehyde or ketone to give (3-hydroxyaldehyde or (3-hydroxyketone, respectively (see Section 5.3.2). 

There are several classes of alkaloids. Among these are purines such as xanthine and caffeine, ter-penes (Chapter 22), polyketides (Chapter 21), and alkaloids derived from amino acids. The basic amino acids ornithine, arginine, histidine, and lysine as well as the aromatic amino acids, anthranilate, and nicoti-nate are some of the starting materials.199 201 Robinson202 203 in 1917 recognized that many alkaloids are derived directly from aromatic amino acids. He proposed that alkaloids arise from Mannich reactions (Eq. 25-12) in which an amine and an aldehyde (probably through a Schiff base) react with a nucleophilic carbon such as that of an enolate anion. Many of the... 

The Perkin synthesis of cinnamic acids is considered to involve reaction of the enolate anion derived from the acid anhydride with the aldehyde, giving rise to the alkoxide (391). Intramolecular acylation follows and the resulting /3-acyloxy derivative undergoes elimination to the unsaturated acid (Scheme 125). 

Enolate anions generated from ketones, esters, and nitriles can be used as nucleophiles in Sn2 reactions. This results in the attachment of an alkyl group to the a-carbon in a process termed alkylation. Aldehydes are too reactive and cannot usually be alkylated in this manner. Alkylation of cyclohexanone is illustrated in the following equation ... 

You may have noticed that aldehydes were conspicuously absent from the examples of alkylation reactions presented in Sections 20.3 and 20.4. This is due to the high reactivity of the carbonyl carbon of an aldehyde as an electrophile. When an enolate anion nucleophile is generated from an aldehyde, under most circumstances it rapidly reacts with the electrophilic carbonyl carbon of an un-ionized aldehyde molecule. Although this reaction, known as the aldol condensation, interferes with the alkylation of aldehydes, it is a very useful synthetic reaction in its own right. The aldol condensation of ethanal is shown in the following equation ... 

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