Thioesters, Claisen rearrangement

These ideas will be discussed in the following subsections, where most of the attention will be devoted to the mechanistic smdies with aromatic esters, which have been the subject of an overwhelming majority of the research efforts. Nevertheless, the same reaction mechanism has been shown to be valid for the PFR of anilides, thioesters, sulfonates, and so forth. Furthermore, it is also applicable to the photo-Claisen rearrangement [i.e. the migration of alkyl (or allyl, benzyl, aryl,)] groups of aromatic ethers to the ortho and para positions of the aromatic ring [21,22]. 

The Claisen rearrangement has been instrumental in the synthesis of a number of natural products.279-289 Many useful derivatives have been prepared using the Claisen-type rearrangement including enol ethers,290 amides,291-293 esters and orthoesters,294-296 acids,297-298 oxazolines,299 ketene acetals,300-301 and thioesters.302 Many of these variants use a cyclic primer to control relative and absolute stereochemistry. The Claisen and oxy Cope provide the best candidates for scale up as a result of the irreversible nature of these reactions. 

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