Ketone Donors

Some secondary amine-catalyzed intermolecular aldolizations with ketone donors. 

The aminocatalysts used are the same that are also used when aldehyde-donors are employed. Aldehydes and ketones can be used as acceptors and 

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Strategy The overall result of an enamine reaction is the Michael addition of a ketone as donor to an cr,/3-unsaturated carbonyl compound as acceptor, yielding a 1,5-dicarbonyl product. The C—C bond made in the Michael addition step is the one between the a- carbon of the ketone donor and the /3 carbon of the unsaturated acceptor. 

Here the hapten (Scheme 2) is a 13-diketone, which incorporates structural features of both reactants - ketone donor and aldehyde acceptor (see below, Scheme 3) - in the aldol reaction of interest. In favorable cases the hapten reacts with the primary amino-group of a lysine residue in the complementary-determining region of an antibody to form a Schiffbase 5, which readily tautomerises to the more stable vinylogous amide 6. 

Scheme 17 Asymmetric aldol reactions with ketone donors...

Ketone donors bearing a-heteroatoms are particularly useful donors for the enamine-catalyzed aldol reactions (Scheme 18). Both anti and syn aldol products can be accessed in remarkably high enantioselectivities using either proline or proline-derived amide, sulfonamide, or peptide catalysts. The syn selective variant of this reaction was discovered by Barbas [179]. Very recently, Luo and Cheng have also described a syn selective variant with dihydroxyacetone donors [201], and the Barbas group has developed improved threonine-derived catalysts 71 (Scheme 18) for syn selective reactions with both protected and unprotected dihydroxyacetone [202]. 

The easiest way to perform a Mannich reaction is to use an excess of the ketone donor and an aldehyde-amine pair to form the required imine in situ. This three-component Mannich protocol is, however, mostly restricted to aromatic amines (Scheme 24). 

With ketone donors, both syn and anti selective reactions are possible. Typically, a,p-unsaturated nitro compounds are used as acceptors. The majority of these reactions are syn selective (Scheme 28) [94, 269, 271, 278, 279, 288-309]. This is a result of favored formation of the (fj-configured enamine and favorable electrostatic interactions between the nitro group and the enamine (Scheme 29) [290, 291, 310]. Of the known anti selective reactions, primary amine-thiourea catalysts such as 158 appear to perform best (Scheme 28) [271, 299, 301]. 

The formation of C-C bonds by aldol condensation is a very useful method in synthesis. Besides the chemical synthesis, aldolases can be used to perform this reaction. The reaction yields a stereoselective condensation of an aldehyde with a ketone donor. 

The List group developed an efficient synthesis for syn Mannich products by using proline as a catalyst and ketone donors [23], Starting from 2-butanone as... 

The substrate range - scope and limitations The reaction can be performed efficiently with a broad variety of ketone donors and aldehydes. Enantioselectivity, however, depends on the enolate structure (Scheme 6.11) [60, 61]. In general, eno-lates bearing larger, branched alkyl groups or a phenyl group result in lower enantioselectivity. The best results were obtained with enolates bearing a methyl substituent (product (S)-16, 87% ee) or a siloxymethyl substituent (product (S)-17, 86% ee). 

To a mixture of anhydrous dimethyl sulfoxide (4 mL) and ketone donor (1 mL) was added the corresponding aldehyde (0.5 mmol) followed by L-proline (20-30mol%) and the resulting mixture was stirred at room temperature for 4—72 h. The reaction mixture was treated with saturated ammonium chloride solution, the layers were separated, and the aqueous layer was extracted several times with ethyl acetate, dried with anhydrous MgS04, and evaporated. The pure aldol products were obtained by flash column chromatography (silica gel, mixture of hexanes and ethyl acetate). 

S)-Proline (1), its derivatives, and related molecules catalyze aldol reactions of ketone donors [6], For example, (S)-proline, (2S,4R)-4-hydroxyproline (2), and... 

Table 2.15 (S)-Proline-catalyzed Mannich-type reactions of ketone donors and glyoxylate imines.

S)-Proline also catalyzed Mannich reactions of ketone donors in a three-component (donor ketone, 4-methoxyaniline, aryaldehyde) protocol, as shown in Table 2.16 [84b, 90, 91]. In these three component reactions, the C-C bond formation occurred at both a-positions of unsymmetrical alkyl ketones (entry 3), and the ratio of the regioisomers depended on the reactant ketones and aldehydes. When the reaction was performed using a ketone donor possessing an a-hydroxy or methoxy group, C-C bond formation occurred exclusively at the oxy-substituted a-carbon (entries 5-7) the major diastereomer was again the syn-product. The enantioselectivities of (S)-proline-catalyzed three-component... 

Table 2.17 ant/ -Mannich-type reactions of ketone donors and /N/-PMP-protected glyoxylate imine catalyzed by (R)-3-pyrrolidine-carboxylic acid (18). 

General Procedure for O-tert-Butyl-L-Threonine Catalyzed Cross-Aldol Reactions of Ketone Donors and Aldehyde Acceptors [2] (p. 23)... 

In addition to broad-scope substrate specificity, 38C2 exhibits high enantioselectivity for the aldol reaction. Although this high degree of enantioselectivity has been observed for antibody-catalyzed ester hydrolysis reactions, it is certainly not a feature common to all such catalysts (Janda et al., 1989 Lo et al., 1997 Pollack et al., 1989 Tanaka et al., 1996 Wade and Scanlan, 1996). Furthermore, the rules for the enantioselectivity for 38C2-catalyzed aldol reactions are both simple and general (Hoffmann et al., 1998). For most ketone donors, attack occurs on the si side of the acceptor. However, when a ketone with an a-hydroxy substituent (such as hydroxyacetone) acts as donor, attack occurs on the reside (Scheme 5). 

Aldolase-type biocatalysts can generally also be expected to catalyze the enolization of the ketone donor. However, directly detecting enolization by fluorescence is not possible. It was recently found that dihydroxyacetone coumarin ether 14 functions... 

The enzymatic aldol reaction represents a useful method for the synthesis of various sugars and sugar-like structures. More than 20 different aldolases have been isolated (see Table 13.1 for examples) and several of these have been cloned and overexpressed. They catalyze the stereospecific aldol condensation of an aldehyde with a ketone donor. Two types of aldolases are known. Type I aldolases, found primarily in animals and higher plants, do not require any cofactor. The x-ray structure of rabbit muscle aldolase (RAMA) indicates that Lys-229 is responsible for Schiff-base formation with dihydroxyacetone phosphate (DHAP) (Scheme 13.7a). Type II aldolases, found primarily in micro-organisms, use Zn as a cofactor, which acts as a Lewis acid enhancing the electrophilicity of the ketone (Scheme 13.7b). In both cases, the aldolases accept a variety of natural (Table 13.1) and non-natural acceptor substrates (Scheme 13.8). 

The as)rmmetric proline-catalyzed intramolecular aldol cyclization, known as the Hajos-Par-rish-Eder-Sauer-Wiechert reaction [106,107], was discovered in the 1970s [108,109,110,111]. This reaction, together with the discovery of nonproteinogenic metal complex-catalyzed direct asymmetric aldol reactions (see also Sect 5.5.1) [112,113,114], led to the development by List and co-workers [115,116] of the first proline-catalyzed intermolecular aldol reaction. Under these conditions, the reaction between a ketone and an aldehyde is possible if a large excess of the ketone donor is used. For example, acetone reacts with several aldehydes in dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO) to give the corresponding aldol in good yields and enantiomeric excesses (ee) (O Scheme 17) [117]. 

O Scheme 25) [150]. The latter acts as an acceptor only because of its good electrophilic and non-nucleophilic character. The a-thioacetal functionality in this enantioselective crosscoupling allows access to highly oxidized, stereo-defined synthons of broad versatility. Moreover, the observed reactivity profile makes them pre-eminent substrates for highly selective cross-aldol reactions with ketone donors. 

Enders and co-workers [162] have reported a protocol for the synthesis of aminopentoses and aminohexoses based on the use of 2,2-dimethyl-l,3-dioxan-5-one (25) as the ketone donor in a three-component Mannich reaction with several aldehydes and p-anisidine in the presence of L-proline or (fert-butyl)dimethylsilyloxy-L-proline as organocatalysts. 

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