Nucleophilic addition ambident nucleophiles

However, in our opinion, the rigorous assignment of products to covalent nitronic esters rather than to their structural isomers, which are true nitro compounds or ionic salts, is a more important and complex problem This problem involves difficulties, because ambident anions of nitro compounds (which are evident precursors of nitronates) have comparable O- and C-nucleophilicities and, therefore, the resulting substrates can belong to any of the above mentioned series. Incorrect structure assignments of derivatives of polynitro compounds prepared from tetranitromethane were made in former studies. In addition, the structures of nitronates assigned to some products in early studies, should not have been accepted without the use of modem spectral methods. 

Rawal s group developed an intramolecular aryl Heck cyclization method to synthesize benzofurans, indoles, and benzopyrans [83], The rate of cyclization was significantly accelerated in the presence of bases, presumably because the phenolate anion formed under the reaction conditions was much more reactive as a soft nucleophile than phenol. In the presence of a catalytic amount of Herrmann s dimeric palladacyclic catalyst (101) [84], and 3 equivalents of CS2CO3 in DMA, vinyl iodide 100 was transformed into ortho and para benzofuran 102 and 103. In the mechanism proposed by Rawal, oxidative addition of phenolate 104 to Pd(0) is followed by nucleophilic attack of the ambident phenolate anion on o-palladium intermediate 105 to afford aryl-vinyl palladium species 106 after rearomatization of the presumed cyclohexadienone intermediate. Reductive elimination of palladium followed by isomerization of the exocyclic double bond furnishes 102. 

We have recently developed a novel method for the generation of alkylideneallyl cations from alkylidenecyclopropanone acetals (8, 9). This method provides a nice opportunity to examine the selectivity of reactions of the ambident cation with various nucleophiles including siloxyalkenes (10) and furans (11). The reaction of the cation with the carbon nucleophiles gives [4 + 3] and [3 + 2] cycloaddition products as well as simple nucleophilic addition products. These results are summarized in this chapter. 

Besides direct nucleophilic attack onto the acceptor group, an activated diene may also undergo 1,4- or 1,6-addition in the latter case, capture of the ambident enolate with a soft electrophile can take place at two different positions. Hence, the nucleophilic addition can result in the formation of three regioisomeric alkenes, which may in addition be formed as E/Z isomers. Moreover, depending on the nature of nucleophile and electrophile, the addition products may contain one or two stereogenic centers, and, as a further complication, basic conditions may give rise to the isomerization of the initially formed 8,y-unsaturated carbonyl compounds (and other acceptor-substituted alkenes of this type) to the thermodynamically more stable conjugated isomer (Eq. 4.1). 

Concerning the mechanism of the rearrangement, it is proposed to involve the addition of the nucleophilic nitrogen of the 1,3-ambident nucleophiles to C-6 (see Section III,A,2,a). This covalent adduct is in equilibrium with the open-chain diamidino compound 83 (R = OCH3, SCH3). Cycliza-tion into 84, followed by a base-catalyzed fragmentation of the nitrogen-carbon bond at N-3 and expulsion of the thiomethyl or methoxy anion, yields the 2-amino-4(5)-phenylpyrimidines (Scheme III.47). 

It will be appreciated that iV-acylpyridinium salts are potentially ambident nucleophilic attack can occur at either the acyl carbonyl or by addition to a ring atom. Examples of the latter behaviour are discussed in the previous chapter. 

The 1,2,4-triazine ring is an ambident electrophile, and reacts with enamine-type nucleophiles. For example, addition of enamine 78 to a solution of triazine 77 in acetic anhydride furnished the pyrrolotriazine 31 (Equation 24) <2003TL2421>. 

The two possible valence-bond structures of the enolate anion, 7a and 7b, show that the anion should act as an ambident nucleophile—a nucleophile with nucleophilic properties associated with both carbon and oxygen. The addition step in the aldol reaction therefore may be expected to take place in either of two ways The anion could attack as a carbon nucleophile to form a carbon-carbon bond, 8, leading ultimately to the aldol 9, or it might attack as an oxygen nucleophile to form a carbon-oxygen bond, thereby leading to the hemiacetal 10. By this reasoning, we should obtain a mixture of products 9 and 10. However, the aldol 9 is the only one of these two possible products that can be isolated ... 

The synthesis of 4-alkyl thioketones is possible by exploiting the stabilizing effect of a sulfur atom upon an adjacent carbanionic center. Ambident allylic anions react so that conjugate addition proceeds exclusively with the a-carbon of the nucleophile,129 243 244 as illustrated in equation (S3) 245 arylsulfinyl and arylsulfonyl groups normally246 behave similarly.247-249 Sulfur-stabilized vinylic carbanions can be prepared and function as Michael donors in difunctionalization sequences.250... 

The presence of two electrophilic reaction centers in the molecule of o -unsaturated carbonyls is responsible for their ability to participate in the synthesis of heterocycles. Such compounds can react as ambident electrophiles owing to delocalization of electron density in a C=C-C=0 system. The addition of nucleophiles to these molecules can proceed in one of two main directions—via attack of the carbonyl group (1,2-addition) or involving the / -carbon (1,4-addition). 

A number of heterocyclic S—N ambident anions have also been shown to react via the sulphur atom with 2-halo-2-nitropropanes by the S l mechanism5,116. The authors suggest116 that the addition of ambident anions to alkylnitro radicals (CR2N02) takes place under kinetic control via the more nucleophilic centre. 

In this fourth part we outline some aspects of the reaction of lithium enolates with electrophilic reagents and their nucleophilic addition onto saturated carbonyl groups. Two significant problems associated with these reactions are (i) the site (C/O) selectivity due to the ambident character of enolates, and (ii) the facial discrimination which controls the stereochemistry of the overall process. 

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