Phenolic ketones, conjugate addition

Cross-conjugated dienones are quite inert to nucleophilic reactions at C-3, and the susceptibility of these systems to dienone-phenol rearrangement precludes the use of strong acid conditions. In spite of previous statements, A " -3-ketones do not form ketals, thioketals or enamines, and therefore no convenient protecting groups are available for this chromophore. Enol ethers are not formed by the orthoformate procedure, but preparation of A -trienol ethers from A -3-ketones has been claimed. Another route to A -trien-3-ol ethers involves conjugate addition of alcohol, enol etherification and then alcohol removal from la-alkoxy compounds. 

The reaction can be modihed to give additional products, as with the reaction of o-hydroxybenzaldehyde and methyl vinyl ketone with DABCO, where the initial Baylis-Hillman product cyclized via conjugate addition of the phenolic oxygen to the conjugated ketone (15-31). ° Aldehydes and conjugated esters can be coupled with a sulfonamide to give an allylic amine. 

The barbiturates undergo extensive hepatic metabolism in which the C5 substituents are transformed to alcohols, phenols, ketones, or carboxylic acids these metabolites may be excreted in urine in part as glucuronide conjugates. For some barbiturates (amobarbital and phenobarbital), N-glucosylation is an additional important metabolic trans-... 

The neutral 1,4- and 1,2-quinone methides react as Michael acceptors. However, the reactivity of these quinone methides is substantially different from that of simple Michael acceptors. The 1,6-addition of protonated nucleophiles NuH to simple Michael acceptors results in a small decrease in the stabilization of product by the two conjugated 7T-orbitals, compared to the more extended three conjugated 7T-orbitals of reactant. However, the favorable ketonization of the initial enol product (Scheme 1) confers a substantial thermodynamic driving force to nucleophile addition. By comparison, the 1,6-addition of NuH to a 1,4-quinone methide results in a large increase in the -stabilization energy due to the formation of a fully aromatic ring (Scheme 2A). This aromatic stabilization is present to a smaller extent at the reactant quinone methide, where it is represented as the contributing zwitterionic valence bond structure for the 4-0 -substituted benzyl carbocation (Scheme 1). The ketonization of the product phenol (Scheme 2B) is unfavorable by ca. 19 kcal/mol.1,2... 

Finally, and as pointed out in Scheme 8.101 (Chapter 8), there is an aromatic version of the Claisen rearrangement. As the ketone intermediate is conjugated (prior to its tautomerization to the corresponding phenol), the process may be considered an addition to an unsaturated carbonyl compound. Equation 9.35 represents the aromatic Claisen rearrangement, which, as shown from left to right, allows the conversion of an arylvinyl ether into a substituted phenol. 

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