Ester stereochemistry, chiral cyclic

Fischer s original method for conversion of the nitrile into an aldehyde involved hydrolysis to a carboxylic acid, ring closure to a cyclic ester (lactone), and subsequent reduction. A modern improvement is to reduce the nitrile over a palladium catalyst, yielding an imine intermediate that is hydrolyzed to an aldehyde. Note that the cyanohydrin is formed as a mixture of stereoisomers at the new chirality center, so two new aldoses, differing only in their stereochemistry at C2, Tesult from Kiliani-Fischer synthesis. Chain extension of D-arabinose, for example, yields a mixture of D-glucose and o-mannose. 

Chiral [160, l70, l80]phosphomonoesters and ATPy[l60, l70, lsO] have been synthesized by Knowles and associates, who devised the procedure outlined in Fig. 19 [51-55], The procedure has been used to synthesize phenyl[160, l70, l80]phos-phate and 2-[160,170,180]phospho-D-glycerate as well as the propylene glycol ester shown. The starting cyclic adduct was prepared by reaction of (— )-ephedrine with P17OCl3, giving a separable mixture of 2-chloro-l,3,2-oxazaphospholidin-2-ones whose chemistry had been described [56], The major isomer was converted to (/ p)-l-[160, nO,180]phospho-1,2-propanediol and (Sp)-ATPy[l60, nO, lsO] by the reactions shown. The stereochemistry at each step of the synthesis was well prece-dented in the literature nevertheless, the configurations were verified by independent methods described in the next section. 

R,R-diphenyl ethylene carbonate CR,R-DPEC)) with a racemic zirconaaziridine. (C2-symmetric, cyclic carbonates are attractive as optically active synthons for C02 because optically active diols are readily available through Sharpless asymmetric dihydroxylations [67].) Reaction through diastereomeric transition states affords the two diastereomers of the spirocyclic insertion product protonolysis and Zr-mediated transesterification in methanol yield a-amino acid esters. As above, the stereochemistry of the new chiral center is determined by the competition between the rate of interconversion of the zirconaaziridine enantiomers and the rate of insertion of the carbonate. As the ratio of zirconaaziridine enantiomers (S)-2/(R)-2 is initially 1 1, a kinetic quench of their equilibrium will result in no selectivity (see Eq. 32). Maximum diastereoselec-tivity (and, therefore, maximum enantioselectivity for the preparation of the... 

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