Sorbates, nucleophilic additions

Early investigations of additions of soft carbon nucleophiles to simple Michael acceptors like ethyl sorbate date back to the beginning of the 20th century. Already in 1906, Vorlander and coworkers4-6 described additions of malonate anion whereas ethyl sorbate provided the 1,6-addition product6 (equation 2), the 1,4-adduct was obtained from methyl 5-phenyl-2,4-pentadienoate4 (equation 3). Thus, it seems that the regioselectivity... 

This work was repeated by several groups7 11 in the reaction of sodium dimethyl-malonate with methyl sorbate, Farmer and Metha9 observed small amounts of the 1,4-adduct besides the 1,6-addition product. Difficulties in conducting the transformations and analyzing the products are evident from reports on malonate additions to ethyl muconate12-14 depending on the reaction conditions, the expected 1,4-adduct (equation 4) or isomerization products formed by double bond displacement were isolated. Nucleophilic 1,4- and 1,6-addition reactions to 2,4-pentadienenitrile were also reported15-17. 

By far most of the reports on addition reactions of hetero-nucleophiles to activated dienes deal with sulfur-nucleophiles17,48,80,120-137, in particular in the synthesis of 7/3-sulfur-substituted steroids which, like their carbon-substituted counterparts (Section n.A), are of interest because of their ability to inhibit the biosynthesis of estrogens80,129-137. Early investigations17,120-122 concentrated on simple acyclic Michael acceptors like methyl sorbate and 2,4-pentadienenitrile. Bravo and coworkers120 observed the formation of a 3 1 mixture of the 1,6- and 1,4-adduct in the reaction of methyl sorbate with methanethiol in basic medium (equation 39). In contrast to this, 2,4-pentadienenitrile adds various thiols regioselectively at C-5, i.e. in a 1,6-fashion (equation 40)17,121,122, and the same is true for reactions of this substrate with hydrogen sulfide (equation 41), sodium bisulfite and ethyl thioglycolate17. 

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