Pinacol-type epoxide ring

Although hydroxylation of phenylalanine to tyrosine looks like a typical electrophilic aromatic substitution, scientists at the U.S. National Institutes of Health discovered that the biochemical pathway combines epoxidation of the benzene ring followed by epoxide ring-opening with rearrangement. This rearrangement, which is the biochemical analog of the pinacol-type reactions described earlier, is known as the NIH shift. ... 

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