Enolates Aldol reaction

A powerful variation of the iron acetyl enolate aldol reaction utilizes the cnolate of complex 8 which bears a (pentafluorophenyl)diphenylphosphane ligand in place of the more usual triphenylphosphane47. The enolate species 9. prepared by treatment of 8 with lithium diiso-propylamide, reacts at — 78 °C with benzaldehyde to produce the aldol adduct 10 with a d.r. of 98.5 1.5. 

The value of 2-acyl-1,3-dithiane 1-oxides in stereocontrolled syntheses has been extended to the enantioselective formation of (3-hydroxy-y-ketoesters through ester enolate aldol reactions <00JOC6027>. 

As shown in Scheme 9.31, the (S)-enolate (100a), from Evans reagent 100. reacts on its Re face if the metal is not coordinated to the oxazolidone carbonyl group at the time of electrophilic attack, which is the normal situation in an uncatalysed boron enolate aldol reaction (see Scheme 9.14) and on the Si face if the metal is coordinated to the oxazolidone carbonyl group (lOOb), which is the normal situation in enolate alkylation (see 9.3.2). 

A diastereoselective titanium-enolate aldol reaction of (.S )-1 -bcnzyloxy-2-mclhyl - (g) pentan-3-one has been reported.151... 

Crotonyl Enolate Aldol Reactions. Boron enolates of the A/-crotonyloxazolidinones have been shown to afford the expected. n-aldol adducts (eq 36). The propensity for selfcondensation during the enolization process is minimized by the use of triethylamine over less kinetically basic amines. 

Representative examples of the reactions of various carbonyl compounds with Grignard reagents under these conditions are listed in Table 5. It is emphasized that enolization, aldol reaction, ester condensation, reduction and 1,4-addition are remarkably suppressed by the use of cerium chloride. Various tertiary alcohols, which are difficult to prepare by the conventional Grignard reaction, can be synthesized by this method. 

Bernard , A., Capelli, A. M., Comotti, A., Gennari, C., Gardner, M., Goodman, J. M., Paterson, I. Origins of stereoselectivity in chiral boron enolate aldol reactions a computational study using transition state modeling. Tetrahedron 1991, 47, 3471-3484. 

The reactions of enolates with aldehydes (aldol reactions) or with imines have been widely developed since the 1970s. Asymmetric aldol-type reactions are very important in the multistep synthesis of complex molecules such as ionophores or p-lactam antibiotics. Chirality has been introduced either on the substituents of boron, on the metal ligands or on the carbon skeleton of the enolate. Aldol reactions are usually run at low temperatures, and when metal enolates are used, the reactions are sometimes easily reversible [160, 209],... 

Of course, under many conditions, the preformed enolate aldol reaction appears to be significantly exothermic. The additional driving force is presumably provided by the enthalpy of coordination of the ambident aldolate ion with a cation. The importance of cation solvation in providing a driving force for the aldol reaction has been elegantly demonstrated by Noyori and coworkers.In this important experiment, the tris(dimethylamino)sulfonium (TAS" ) enolate of l-phenyl-2-propanone was prepared as shown in equation (6). The naked enolate was obtained as a yellow crystalline material, free of trimethylsilyl fluoride, by concentration of the THF solution. 

Offenhauer and Nelsen discovered that boric acid is an excellent catalyst for aldol condensations treatment of heptanal with boric acid in refluxing toluene under a Dean-Stark trap gives the condensation product in quantitative yield (equation 10). The authors suggested an intermediate enol borate this was probably the flrst example of a boron enolate aldol reaction. 

The foregoing results clearly constitute an encouraging lead, and represent the best that has yet been done with chiral auxiliaries for lithium enolate aldol reactions. Although the chiral auxiliary is not covalently attached to either reactant, it is still used stoichiometrically. Furthermore, the process has only been demonstrated with the aldol reaction in equation (133). It will be interesting to see if the efficacy of this method will extend to other enolates and aldehydes. 

The high syn stereoselectivity attained in zirconium enolate aldol reactions has proved useful in complex natural product synthesis. The zirconium-mediated aldol reaction of the chiral ethyl ketone (9) with a chiral aldehyde has been used by Masamune et al. to give selectively adduct (10), which was further elaborated into the ansa chain of rifamycin S (equation 1). Good enolate diastereofacial selectivity is also obtained here and leads to a predominance of one of the two possible syn adducts. A zirconium enolate aldol reaction also features in the Deslongchamps formal total synthesis of erythromycin A, where the di(cyclopentadienyl)chiorozirconium enolate from methyl propionate adds with high levels of Cram selectivity to the chiral aldehyde (11) to give the syn adduct (12 equation 2). A further example is... 

In some cases titanium enolates give as good, if not better, stereoselectivity as the corresponding boron enolate aldol reactions (Volume 2, Chapter 1.7). For example, the tri(isopropoxy)titanium enolate of the chiral ethyl ketone (27) has been found to undergo aldol reactions with aldehydes with very high dia-... 

---