Thiazolium salts thiamine

The reduction of the thiazolium salt, thiamine, has been investigated with sodium borohydride, trimethoxyborohydride, and lithium... 

This volume is intended to present a comprehensive description of the chemistry of thiazole and its monocyclic derivatives, based on the chemical literature up to December, 1976. It is not concerned with polycyclic thiazoles, such as benzo- or naphthothiazole, nor with hydrogenated derivatives, such as thiazolines or thiazolidines later volumes in this series are devoted to these derivatives. The chemistry of thiamine has also been excluded from the present volume because of the enormous amount of literature corresponding to the subject and is developed in another volume. On the other hand, a discussion of selenazole and its monocyclic derivatives has been included, and particular emphasis has been given to the cyanine dyes derived from thiazolium salts. 

By protodetritiation of the thiazolium salt (152) and of 2 tritiothiamine (153) Kemp and O Brien (432) measured a kinetic isotope effect, of 2.7 for (152). They evaluated the rate of protonation of the corresponding yiides and found that the enzyme-mediated reaction of thiamine with pyruvate is at least 10 times faster than the maximum rate possible with 152. The scale of this rate ratio establishes the presence within the enzyme of a higher concentration of thiamine ylide than can be realized in water. Thus a major role of the enzyme might be to change the relative thermodynamic stabilities of thiamine and its ylide (432). 

The only reduction investigated more recently on thiazole derivatives concerns the action of sodium borohydride upon thiazolium salts chosen as model molecules for thiamine (478-480). 

The reduction of a number of thiazolium salts had been shown to yield diastereomeric mixtures of thiazolidines from which it has been possible, in some cases (including that of thiamine), to isolate one pure species (Schemes 94 and 94a). 

Takamizawa et al. developed a general ring-expansion reaction of heterocycles that, applied to thiazolium salts, yields 1,4-thiazines (496, 497) thiamine (220) reacts with dialkyl acylphosphonates (221) to give the tricyclic 1,4-thiazine (222) (498), which is easily hydrolyzed to dihydro-1,4-thiazinone (223) (499) (Scheme 106). In the case of thiazolium slats containing no functional groups (224), 1,4-thiazine derivatives (226) were directly obtained in fairly good yields (Scheme 107). 

Thiazolium salts with alkyl (103, 722), arylalkyl (116), aryl (305), or heteroaryl (96) substituents on the nitrogen have been also prepared by this procedure. As in the thiazole series, N-substituted thioamides can be formed directly in the reaction mixture from phosphorus pentasulfide and N-substituted amides (127). These methods are important in the synthesis of thiamine 102 (vitamin Bj) (Scheme 45). 

Salt Formation. As a weaMy basic pyrimidine and a thiazolium cation, thiamine forms both mono- and dipositive salts, eg, the two commercial... 

Thiamine contains two heterocyclic rings, a pyrimidine and a thiazole, the latter present as a thiazolium salt. The pyrimidine portion is unimportant for our understanding of the chemistry of TPP, though it may play a role in some of the enzymic reactions. 

Breslow and co-workers elucidated the currently accepted mechanism of the benzoin reaction in 1958 using thiamin 8. The mechanism is closely related to Lapworth s mechanism for cyanide anion catalyzed benzoin reaction (Scheme 2) [28, 29], The carbene, formed in situ by deprotonation of the corresponding thiazolium salt, undergoes nucleophilic addition to the aldehyde. A subsequent proton transfer generates a nucleophilic acyl anion equivalent known as the Breslow intermediate IX. Subsequent attack of the acyl anion equivalent into another molecule of aldehyde generates a new carbon - carbon bond XI. A proton transfer forms tetrahedral intermediate XII, allowing for collapse to produce the a-hydroxy ketone accompanied by liberation of the active catalyst. As with the cyanide catalyzed benzoin reaction, the thiazolylidene catalyzed benzoin reaction is reversible [30]. 

Vitamin Bj or thiamine (Figure 19.21) is 3-(4-amino-2-methylpyrimidin-5-ylmethyl)-5-(2-hydroxyethyl)-4-methylthiazolium. It is isolated, synthesized, and used in food supplements and in food fortifications as a solid thiazolium salt in the form of thiamine hydrochloride or thiamine mononitrate [403]. 

Relatively little is known concerning the oxidation of azolium salts. Most of the publications deal with thiazolium salts due to the significant biochemical role of thiamin as a coenzyme in a variety of enzyme-catalyzed decarboxylations and aldol-type condensations. The chemistry of thiamin has been extensively reviewed (83MI1). Depending on the reaction conditions, thio-chrome (197) and the disulfide 198 are formed by oxidation of thiamin (57JA4386). 

The next coenzyme for which a mechanism was established was thiamin pyrophosphate [3]. Ronald Breslow used nmr spectroscopy to show that the hydrogen atom at C-2 of a thiazolium salt rapidly exchanges with deuterium in even slightly alkaline solutions (6), so that the coenzyme offers an anionic centre for catalysis (Breslow, 1957). With this established, Breslow could confidently offer the pathway shown in Scheme 2 for the action of the... 

In the thiazolium cation the proton in the 2-position is acidic and its removal gives rise to the ylide/carbene 227. This nucleophilic carbene 227 can add, e.g., to an aldehyde to produce the cationic primary addition product 228. The latter, again via C-deprotonation, affords the enamine-like structure 229. Nucleophilic addition of 229 to either an aldehyde or a Michael-acceptor affords compound(s) 230. The catalytic cycle is completed by deprotonation and elimination of the carbene 227. Strictly speaking, the thiazolium salts (and the 1,2,4-triazolium salts discussed below) are thus not the actual catalysts but pre-catalysts that provide the catalytically active nucleophilic carbenes under the reaction conditions used. This mechanism of action of thiamine was first formulated by Breslow [234] and applies to the benzoin and Stetter-reactions catalyzed by thiazolium salts [235-237] and to those... 

The conjugate addition of carbonyl anions catalysed by thiazolium salts (via umpol-ung) that is fully operative under neutral aqueous conditions has been accomplished. The combination of a-keto carboxylates (157) and thiazolium-derived zwitterions (e.g. 160) in a buffered protic environment (pH 7.2) generates reactive carbonyl anions that readily undergo conjugate additions to substituted o /3-unsaturated 2-acylimidazoles (158) to produce (159). The scope of the reaction has been examined and found to accommodate various a-keto carboxylates and /3-aryl-substituted unsaturated 2-acylimidazoles. The optimum precatalyst for this process is the commercially available thiazolium salt (160), a simple analogue of thiamine diphosphate. In this process, no benzoin products from carbonyl anion dimerization were observed. The resulting 1,4-dicarbonyl compounds (159) can be efficiently converted into esters and amides by way of activation of the A-methylimidazole ring via alkylation.181... 

When, in 1832, Wohler and Liebig first discovered the cyanide-catalyzed coupling of benzaldehyde that became known as the benzoin condensation , they laid the foundations for a wide field of growing organic chemistry [1]. In 1903, Lapworth proposed a mechanistical model with an intermediate carbanion formed in a hydrogen cyanide addition to the benzaldehyde substrate and subsequent deprotonation [2]. In the intermediate active aldehyde , the former carbonyl carbon atom exhibits an inverted, nucleophilic reactivity, which exemplifies the Umpo-lung concept of Seebach [3]. In 1943, Ukai et al. reported that thiazolium salts also surprisingly catalyze the benzoin condensation [4], an observation which attracted even more attention when Mizuhara et al. found, in 1954, that the thiazolium unit of the coenzyme thiamine (vitamin Bi) (1, Fig. 9.1) is essential for its activity in enzyme biocatalysis [5]. Subsequently, the biochemistry of thiamine-dependent enzymes has been extensively studied, and this has resulted in widespread applications of the enzymes as synthetic tools [6]. 

As an obvious extension of the benzoin reaction, the cross-coupling of aldehydes or of aldehydes and ketones was first achieved with the thiamine-dependent enzyme benzoylformate decarboxylase. This linked a variety of mostly aromatic aldehydes to acetaldehyde to form the corresponding a-hydroxy ketones, both chemo- and stereoselectively [31]. Synthetic thiazolium salts, developed by Stetter and co-workers and similar to thiamine itself [32], have been successfully used by Suzuki et al. for a diastereoselective intramolecular crossed aldehyde-ketone benzoin reaction during the course of an elegant natural product synthesis [33], Stereocontrol was exerted by pre-existing stereocenters in the specific substrates, the catalysts being achiral. 

Thiamine pyrophosphate looks quite like a nucleotide. It has two heterocyclic rings, a pyrimidine similar to those found in DNA and a thiazolium salt. This ring has been alkylated on nitrogen by the pyrimidine part of the molecule. Finally, there is a pyrophosphate attached to the thiazolium salt by an ethyl side chain. 

If this is really true and not just a theoretical analogy, it ought to be possible to learn from Nature and design useful d1 reagents based on thiamine. This was done by Stetter using simplified thiamines. The pyrimidine is replaced by a benzene ring and the pyrophosphate is removed. This leaves a simple thiazolium salt called a Stetter reagent. 

The deprotonation and addition of a base to thiazolium salts are combined to produce an acyl carbanion equivalent (an active aldehyde) [363, 364], which is known to play an essential role in catalysis of the thiamine diphosphate (ThDP) coenzyme [365, 366]. The active aldehyde in ThDP dependent enzymes has the ability to mediate an efScient electron transfer to various physiological electron acceptors, such as lipoamide in pyruvate dehydrogenase multienzyme complex [367], flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD) in pyruvate oxidase [368] and Fc4S4 cluster in pyruvate ferredoxin oxidoreductase [369]. 

Chemistry. Isolation of thiamine from natural sources (hce bran, yeast extracts, or wheat germ) is only of historical interest. Production by bioprocesses is not cost-effective at present. AH of the thiamine produced worldwide is manufactured by chemical processes operated at moderately large scale. Two major synthetic routes have been used alkylation of a preformed thiazole, or constmction of the thiazolium salt from a pyrimidine carrying the ultimate thiazole nitrogen (9,40). The latter approach is now generally preferred for manufacturing. 

Studies on thiamine (vitamin Bi) catalyzed formation of acyloins from aliphatic aldehydes and on thiamine or thiamine diphosphate catalyzed decarboxylation of pyruvate have established the mechanism for the catalytic activity of 1,3-thiazolium salts in carbonyl condensation reactions. In the presence of bases, quaternary thiazolium salts are transformed into the ylide structure (2), the ylide being able to exert a cat ytic effect resembling that of the cyanide ion in the benzoin condensation (Scheme 2). Like cyanide, the zwitterion (2), formed by the reaction of thiazolium salts with base, is nucleophilic and reacts at the carbonyl group of aldehy s. The resultant intermediate can undergo base-catalyzed proton... 

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