Ring unsubstituted lactones

Ouhadi T, Hamitou R, Jerome R, Teyssie P (1976) Soluble bimetallic p-oxoalkoxides. 8. Structure and kinetic behavior of the catalytic species in unsubstituted lactone ring-opening polymerization. Macromolecules 9 927-931... 

By comparison unsubstituted lactones such as propiolactone (G) polymerize more slowly and molecular weights are lower. The authors believe propagation is slower, the carboxylate anion formed from pivalolactone ring opening being more nucleophilic because of the inductive effect of the two methyl substituents. 

Scheme 4.11 Ring-opening polymerization of unsubstituted lactones.

Thus, the direction of the ring-opening may change by the nature of the monomer For strained 4- and 7-membered unsubstituted lactones it proceeds via O-alkyl cleavage whereas for substituted lactones O-acyl cleavage becomes important. 

The five-membered unsubstituted lactone y-butyrolactone (y-BL) may not polymerize when using a conventional chemical catalyst. However, it was reported that only an oligomer was produced by the ring-opening polymerization of y-BL using PPL or lipase from Pseudomonas sp. [11,36]. 

Unsubstituted 3-alkyl- or 3-aryl-isoxazoles undergo ring cleavage reactions under more vigorous conditions. In these substrates the deprotonation of the H-5 proton is concurrent with fission of the N—O and C(3)—-C(4) bonds, giving a nitrile and an ethynolate anion. The latter is usually hydrolyzed on work-up to a carboxylic acid, but can be trapped at low temperature. As shown by Scheme 33, such reactions could provide useful syntheses of ketenes and /3-lactones (79LA219). 

Heterocycles form a specific class of monomers. They do not usually undergo radical polymerization, and the kind of ionic polymerization mechanism is determined by the kind of heteroatom, substituent and ring size. Oxiranes and, aziridines are polymerized by both ionic mechanisms. With the exception of lactone, four-membered and larger heterocycles with oxygen and with substituted nitrogen can only be polymerized cationically heterocycles with unsubstituted nitrogen can also be polymerized anionically. 

Modular PKS enzymes are responsible for the synthesis of a wide diversity of structures and seem to have more relaxed specificities in several of the enzymatic steps. Their enormous appeal for combinatorial purposes, though, derives from the presence of multiple modules that can be manipulated independently, allowing the production of rings of different sizes and with potential stereochemical variation at each PK carbon. The higher complexity of these pathways has somewhat hindered their exploitation, but recently, several have been fully characterized. Among them, by far the most studied modular multienzyme complex is 6-deoxyerythronolide B synthase (DEBS 240,266,267), which produces the 14-member macrolide 6-deoxyerythronolide B (10.70, Fig. 10.45). DEBS contains three large subunits each of which contains two PKS enzyme modules. Each module contains the minimal PKS enzyme vide supra) and either none (M3), one (ketoreductase KR Ml, M2, MS, and M6), or three (dehydratase DH-enoyl reductase ER-ketoreductase KR, M4) catalytic activities that produce a keto (M3), an hydroxy (Ml, M2, MS and M6), or an unsubstituted methylene (M4) on the last monomeric unit of the growing chain (Fig. 10.45). A final thioesterase (TE) activity catalyzes lactone formation with concomitant release of 10.70 from the multienzyme complex. Introduction of TE activity after an upstream module allows various reduced-size macrolides (10.71-10.73, Eig. 10.45) to be obtained. 

The plant bufadienolide scillarenin (500) has been synthesized. The starting material was 15a-hydroxycortexone (501), which was converted into the diketone ketal (502) by cupric acetate oxidation at C(21), followed by selective ketalization and tosylate elimination. Protection at C(3) as the dienol ether, oxiran formation at C(20) with dimethylsulphonium methylide, and regeneration of the C(3)- and C(21)-oxo-groups by acid hydrolysis then provided (503). Selective reaction at C(21) with the sodium salt of diethyl methoxycarbonyl-methylphosphonate, and boron trifluoride rearrangement of the epoxide ring to the aldehydo-unsaturated ester (504), was followed by enol lactonization to the bufadienolide (505). This was converted, in turn, to scillarenin (500) via the 14,15-bromohydrin, by standard reactions. Unsubstituted bufadienolides have also been prepared by the same method. 

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