Nucleophilic addition reactions carboxylic acid derivatives

Lewis Acid Promoted Addition Reactions of Organometallic Compounds Nucleophilic Addition to Imines and Imine Derivatives Nucleophilic Addition to Carboxylic Acid Derivatives... 

As a general rule, nucleophilic addition reactions are characteristic only of aldehydes and ketones, not of carboxylic acid derivatives. The reason for the difference is structural. As discussed previously in A Preview of Carbonyl Compounds and shown in Figure 19.14, the tetrahedral intermediate produced by addition of a nucleophile to a carboxylic acid derivative can eliminate a leaving group, leading to a net nucleophilic acyl substitution reaction. The tetrahedral intermediate... 

The addition of a nucleophile to a polar C=0 bond is the key step in thre< of the four major carbonyl-group reactions. We saw in Chapter 19 that when. nucleophile adds to an aldehyde or ketone, the initially formed tetrahedra intermediate either can be protonated to yield an alcohol or can eliminate th< carbonyl oxygen, leading to a new C=Nu bond. When a nucleophile adds to carboxylic acid derivative, however, a different reaction course is followed. Tin initially formed tetrahedral intermediate eliminates one of the two substituent originally bonded to the carbonyl carbon, leading to a net nucleophilic acy substitution reaction (Figure 21.1. ... 

Let us now examine how substituent effects in reactants influence the rates of nucleophilic additions to carbonyl groups. The most common mechanism for substitution reactions at carbon centers is by an addition-elimination mechanism. The adduct formed by the nucleophilic addition step is tetrahedral and has sp hybridization. This adduct may be the product (as in hydride reduction) or an intermediate (as in nucleophilic substitution). For carboxylic acid derivatives, all of the steps can be reversible, but often one direction will be strongly favored by product stability. The addition step can be acid-catalyzed or base-catalyzed or can occur without specific catalysis. In protic solvents, proton transfer reactions can be an integral part of the mechanism. Solvent molecules, the nucleophile, and the carbonyl compound can interact in a concerted addition reaction that includes proton transfer. The overall rate of reaction depends on the reactivity of the nucleophile and the position of the equilibria involving intermediates. We therefore have to consider how the substituent might affect the energy of the tetrahedral intermediate. 

In addition to carboxylic acid derivatives, anhydrides and acid fluorides are also accessible straightforward via carbonylation reactions depending on the various nucleophiles used. Eor example, water (hydroxycarbonylation) will give carboxylic acid, alcohols (alkoxycarbonylation) will give esters, amines (aminocarb-onylation) will give amides, and anhydrides and acid fluorides can be produced if... 

The second fundamental reaction of carbonyl compounds, nucleophilic acyl substitution, is related to the nucleophilic addition reaction just discussed but occurs only with carboxylic acid derivatives rather than with aldehydes and ketones. When the carbonyl group of a carboxylic acid derivative reacts with a nucleophile, addition occurs in the usual way, but the initially formed tetra-... 

Figure 19.14 Carboxylic acid derivatives have an electronegative substituent Y = -Br, —Cl, -OR, -NR2 that can be expelled as a leaving group from the tetrahedral intermediate formed by nucleophilic addition. Aldehydes and ketones have no such leaving group and thus do not usually undergo this reaction.

Acid halides are among the most reactive of carboxylic acid derivatives and can be converted into many other kinds of compounds by nucleophilic acyl substitution mechanisms. The halogen can be replaced by -OH to yield an acid, by —OCOR to yield an anhydride, by -OR to yield an ester, or by -NH2 to yield an amide. In addition, the reduction of an acid halide yields a primary alcohol, and reaction with a Grignard reagent yields a tertiary alcohol. Although the reactions we ll be discussing in this section are illustrated only for acid chlorides, similar processes take place with other acid halides. 

Use of the relatively small cyclopropane ring drastically reduces the potential for deleterious steric bulk effects and adds only a relatively small lipophilic increment to the partition coefficient of the drug. One of the clever elements of the rolicyprine synthesis itself is the reaction of d,l tranylcypromine (67) with L-5-pyrrolidone-2-carboxylic acid (derived from glutamic acid) to form a highly crystalline diastereomeric salt, thereby effecting resolution. Addition of dicyclohexylcarbodiimide activates the carboxyl group to nucleophilic attack by the primary amine thus forming the amide rolicyprine (68). 

Phenylthio)nitroalkenes are also excellent intermediates for the synthesis of other heterocyclic ring systems. For example, tetrahydropyran carboxylic acid derivatives are formed by the intramolecular addition of oxygen nucleophile to l-(phenylthio)nitroalkene predominantly as the m-isomer (9.1 1) (see Eq. 4.40). The reaction may proceed via the chair-like transition state with two pseudo-equatorial substituents.50... 

In HO -catalyzed hydrolysis (specific base catalyzed hydrolysis), the tetrahedral intermediate is formed by the addition of a nucleophilic HO ion (Fig. 3.1, Pathway b). This reaction is irreversible for both esters and amides, since the carboxylate ion formed is deprotonated in basic solution and, hence, is not receptive to attack by the nucleophilic alcohol, phenol, or amine. The reactivity of the carboxylic acid derivative toward a particular nucleophile depends on a) the relative electron-donating or -withdrawing power of the substituents on the carbonyl group, and b) the relative ability of the -OR or -NR R" moiety to act as a leaving group. Thus, electronegative substituents accelerate hydrolysis, and esters are more readily hydrolyzed than amides. 

The retrosynthesis involves the following transformations i) isomerisation of the endocyclic doble bond to the exo position ii) substitution of the terminal methylene group by a more stable carbonyl group (retro-Wittig reaction) iii) nucleophilic retro-Michael addition iv) reductive allylic rearrangement v) dealkylation of tertiary alcohol vi) homolytic cleavage and functionalisation vii) dehydroiodination viii) conversion of ethynyl ketone to carboxylic acid derivative ix) homolytic cleavage and functionalisation x) 3-bromo-debutylation xi) conversion of vinyl trimethylstannane to methyl 2-oxocyclopentanecarboxylate (67). 

The most significant change in these reactions is the formation of the carbon-nncleophile bond so, in both types of mechanism, the reaction is termed a nucleophilic addition. It should be noted that the polarization in the carbonyl group leads to nucleophilic addition, whereas the lack of polarization in the C=C donble bond of an alkene leads to electrophilic addition reactions (see Chapter 8). Carbonyl groups in carboxylic acid derivatives undergo a similar type of reactivity to nucleophiles, but the... 

Nucleophilic addition of an enolate anion from a carboxylic acid derivative onto an aldehyde or ketone is simply an aldol-type reaction (see Section 10.3). 

Now this is exactly the same situation we encountered when we compared the reactivity of aldehydes and ketones with that of carboxylic acid derivatives (see Section 7.8). The net result here is acylation of the nucleophile, and in the case of acylation of enolate anions, the reaction is termed a Claisen reaction. It is important not to consider aldol and Claisen reactions separately, but to appreciate that the initial addition is the same, and differences in products merely result from the absence or presence... 

A problem inherent in metallation reactions with Grignard reagents is the poor chemos-electivity of the reactions. The most common side-reactions are the competing nucleophile addition and the reduction of the carbonyl compounds. An interesting alternative would be to use the high electrophilicity of the Mg + cation and its tendency to form a multicoordinate complex. The preformation of a Mg(II) complex with a carbonyl compound or a carboxylic acid derivative enhances the acidity of the substrate to the point where a relatively mild base can be used. 

Note that the reaction at the phosphorus atom is postulated to occur by an SN2 (no intermediate formed) rather than by an addition mechanism such as we encountered with carboxylic acid derivatives (Kirby and Warren, 1967). As we learned in Section 13.2, for attack at a saturated carbon atom, OH- is a better nucleophile than H20 by about a factor of 104 (Table 13.2). Toward phosphorus, which is a harder electrophilic center (see Box 13.1), however, the relative nucleophilicity increases dramatically. For triphenyl phosphate, for example, OH- is about 108 times stronger than H20 as a nucleophile (Barnard et al., 1961). Note that in the case of triphenyl phosphate, no substitution may occur at the carbon bound to the oxygen of the alcohol moiety, and therefore, neutral hydrolysis is much less important as compared to the other cases (see /NB values in Table 13.12). Consequently, the base-catalyzed reaction generally occurs at the phosphorus atom leading to the dissociation of the alcohol moiety that is the best leaving group (P-0 cleavage), as is illustrated by the reaction of parathion with OH ... 

Nucleophilic catalysis is a process of particular significance in reactions of carboxylic acid derivatives. As an example we may cite hydrolysis catalyzed by a tertiary amine (Scheme 20). The catalysis is effective because initial attack of the amine will be faster than attack by the less nucleophilic water the amine addition yields the intermediate 27 which, because of the positive charge, has an extremely reactive carbonyl group and is attacked by water much faster than the original compound. The fact that a given base is acting by nucleophilic catalysis... 

In all of the reactions with carboxylic acid derivatives, the carbonyl carbon is acting as the substrate in nucleophilic substitution. Rather than memorize all these reactions, you should remember that carboxylic acids and their derivatives undergo nucleophilic substitution aldehydes and ketones prefer nucleophilic addition. 

The combination of addition and elimination reactions has the overall effect of substituting one nucleophile for another in this case, substituting an alcohol for water. The rate of these nucleophilic substitution reactions is determined by the ease with which the elimination step occurs. As a rule, the best leaving groups in nucleophilic substitutions reactions are weak bases. The most reactive of the carboxylic acid derivatives are the acyl chlorides because the leaving group is a chloride ion, which is a very weak base (ATb KT20). 

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