Natural products architecture

The oxidative activation of arenes is a powerful and versatile synthetic tactic that enables dearomatization to give useful synthons. Central to this chemistry are hydroxylated arenes or arenols, the phenolic functions of which can be exploited to facilitate the dearomatizing process by two-electron oxidation. Suitably substituted arenols can hence be converted, with the help of oxygen- or carbon-based nucleophiles, into ortho-quinone monoketals and ortho-quinols. These 6-oxocyclohexa-2,4-dienones are ideally functionalized for the construction of many complex and polyoxygenated natural product architectures. Today, the inherent and multiple reactivity of arenol-derived ortho-quinone monoketals and ortho-quinols species is finding numerous and, in many cases, biomimetic applications in modern organic synthesis. 

The aim of this volume is to convince the reader that metal carbene complexes have made their way from organometallic curiosities to valuable - and in part unique - reagents for application in synthesis and catalysis. But it is for sure that this development over 4 decades is not the end of the story there is both a need and considerable potential for functional organometallics such as metal carbon multiple bond species which further offer exciting perspectives in selective synthesis and catalysis as well as in reactions applied to natural products and complex molecules required for chemical architectures and material science. 

Lee, M.L. Schneider, G. (2001) Scaffold Architecture and Pharmacophoric Properties of Natural Products and Trade Drugs Application in the Design of Natural Product-Based Combinatorial Libraries. Journal of Combinatorial Chemistry, 3, 284-289. 

The described procedure has been widely used by Smith III and coworkers [250] in the efficient total synthesis of natural products containing extended 1,3-hydroxylated chains. This architecture is often found as a structural element in polyene macrolide antibiotics [251] such as mycotoxin A and B, dermostatin, and roxaticin. The Smith group used the above-mentioned approach (e. g., as five-component coupling) for the synthesis of the pseudo-C2-symmetric trisacetonide (+)-2-471 [252], which was employed by Schreiber and coworkers [253] within the synthesis of (+)-mycotoxin A (2-470a) (Scheme 2.108). Thus, lithiation of 2.5 equiv. dithiane 2-462b followed by treat-... 

As the latest example in this section, the synthesis of clavolonine [314] by the group of Evans is mentioned [315]. Through the action of a multiple anionic domino reaction a functionalized linear carbon chain was converted into the polycyclic architecture of the natural product. 

A recent publication by the group of Baran reports the total synthesis of ageli-ferin, an antiviral agent with interesting molecular architecture (Scheme 4.16) [42], Just 1 min of microwave irradiation of sceptrin, another natural product, at 195 °C in water under sealed-vessel conditions provides ageliferin in 40% yield, along with 52% of recovered starting material. Remarkably, if the reaction is performed without... 

Schreiber and his coworkers have published extensively over the past decade on the use of this photocycloaddition for the synthesis of complex molecules730 81. Schreiber was the first to recognize that the bicyclic adducts formed in these reactions could be unmasked under acidic conditions to afford threo aldol products of 1,4-dicarbonyl compounds (175 to 176) (Scheme 40). The c -bicyclic system also offers excellent stereocontrol in the addition of various electrophilic reagents (E—X) to the enol ether of these photoadducts on its convex face (175 to 177). This strategy has been exploited in the synthesis of a variety of architecturally novel natural products. 

The natural product ( )-carpanone, possess an attractive and relatively complex architecture that can be rapidly assembled from very basic starting materials [108]. 

Lee ML, Schneider GJ. (2001) Scaffold architecture and pharmaco-phoric properties of natural products and trade drugs Application in the design of natural product-based combinatorial libraries. Comb Chem 3 284-289. 

Macromolecules are very much like the crystalline powder just described. A few polymers, usually biologically-active natural products like enzymes or proteins, have very specific structure, mass, repeat-unit sequence, and conformational architecture. These biopolymers are the exceptions in polymer chemistry, however. Most synthetic polymers or storage biopolymers are collections of molecules with different numbers of repeat units in the molecule. The individual molecules of a polymer sample thus differ in chain length, mass, and size. The molecular weight of a polymer sample is thus a distributed quantity. This variation in molecular weight amongst molecules in a sample has important implications, since, just as in the crystal dimension example, physical and chemical properties of the polymer sample depend on different measures of the molecular weight distribution. 

The Dess-Martin periodinane 8 is also able to oxidize aromatic compounds to the corresponding quinones. The presence of water is important and, starting from anilides 42 substituted in the 2-position, the rare class of ortho-imido-quinones 43 is accessible, Scheme 21. It has been shown that compounds of type 43 are interesting building blocks and can lead to polycyclic molecules of diverse molecular architecture [95,96]. They can undergo subsequent Diels-Alder reactions and intramolecular versions have been used for a rapid access to natural products and for synthesis of scaffolds for further manipulation.para-Quinones 45 are also easily accessible, however, only in modest yields by reacting 4-sub-stituted anilines 44 under the same reaction conditions, Scheme 21 [97]. 

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