Sulfur oxides, compared with nitrogen analogs

Sulfur compounds with divalent sulfur functionalities are much more prone to dioxirane oxidation on account of their higher nucleophilicity compared to the above-presented oxygen-type nucleophiles. Examples of this type of dioxirane oxidation abound in the literature. Such a case is the oxidation of thiols, which may be quite complex and afford a complex mixture of oxidation products, e.g. sulfinic acids, sulfonic acids, disulfides, thiosulfonates and aldehydes , and is, therefore, hardly useful in synthesis. Nevertheless, the oxidation of some 9i/-purine-6-thiols in the presence of an amine nucleophile produces n >( -nucleoside analogs in useful yields (equation 19). This reaction also displays the general chemoselectivity trend that divalent sulfur functionalities are more reactive than trivalent sp -hybridized nitrogen compounds P. 

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