(Bio)isosteres of ortho- and meta-substituted benzenes

• H. Erik Diepers and
• Johannes C. L. Walker

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2024, 20, 859–890, doi:10.3762/bjoc.20.78

• ]propellane (129). Gassman reported the initial synthesis of [3.1.1]propellane (129) in 1980 [61], and this was recently optimised by Uchiyama (Scheme 13A) [47]. Cyclisation to the bridged structure 126 was achieved by enolate formation and intramolecular nucleophilic substitution of iodide diester 125. A

Synthesis of 2,2-difluoro-1,3-diketone and 2,2-difluoro-1,3-ketoester derivatives using fluorine gas

• Alexander S. Hampton,
• David R. W. Hodgson,
• Graham McDougald,
• Linhua Wang and
• Graham Sandford

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2024, 20, 460–469, doi:10.3762/bjoc.20.41

• reactive enolate 1a-enolate. Nitrogen-centered bases react with fluorine gas to form N-fluoroammonium fluorides and fluoride ion [49]. Thus, on addition of tertiary amines, fluorine can react to generate basic fluoride ions and deliver reactive, electrophilic N–F species. Given that Selectfluor is

• anionic 1a–i-enolate species in parallel with N-fluoroammonium ion 6. Fluoride ions formed through the reactions between fluorine and quinuclidine or fluorine and enolate species, may deprotonate 1a–i-enol, to form enolates of 1a–i that are reactive towards both fluorine and N-fluoroammonium ion 6. The

• effective base to facilitate the formation of 1a-enolate from 1a-enol and thus facilitate the initial monofluorination step by either fluorine or N-fluoroammonium ion 6. Carbonate ions are also expected to be highly basic in MeCN, however, their limited solubility is likely to inhibit their ability to act

Mechanisms for radical reactions initiating from N-hydroxyphthalimide esters

• Carlos R. Azpilcueta-Nicolas and
• Jean-Philip Lumb

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2024, 20, 346–378, doi:10.3762/bjoc.20.35

• (Scheme 30B). Then, cesium carbonate deprotonates the enol OH in 145, to provide the enolate form of Breslow’s intermediate 146, which is a suitable reducing agent to trigger the fragmentation of NHPI ester 58 (E°ox = −0.97 V vs SCE in MeCN). Hence, it is proposed that enolate 146 induces the single

Catalytic multi-step domino and one-pot reactions

• Svetlana B. Tsogoeva

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2024, 20, 254–256, doi:10.3762/bjoc.20.25

• facile stereoselective tandem reaction based on the asymmetric conjugate addition of dialkylzinc reagents to unsaturated acylimidazoles, followed by trapping of the intermediate zinc enolate with carbocations [12]. A practical one-pot synthesis of fluorescent pyrazolo[3,4-b]pyridin-6-ones by reacting 5

Using the phospha-Michael reaction for making phosphonium phenolate zwitterions

• Matthias R. Steiner,
• Max Schmallegger,
• Larissa Donner,
• Johann A. Hlina,
• Christoph Marschner,
• Judith Baumgartner and
• Christian Slugovc

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2024, 20, 41–51, doi:10.3762/bjoc.20.6

• regarded as stable phosphonium enolate zwitterions. The first zwitterions of this type were published in 1955 [31], but the first crystal structure of a phosphonium enolate zwitterion was reported only in 2007 by Zhu et al., who synthesized the compound via a three-component coupling between an

• between the anionic phenolate and the cationic phosphonium center [32]. Other stable phosphonium enolate or phenolate zwitterions feature P–O distances in the range of 2.60–2.95 Å [28][32]. For comparison, in 1,2-oxaphosphetanes, the covalent bond between P–O is characterized by a distinctly shorter

Anion–π catalysis on carbon allotropes

• M. Ángeles Gutiérrez López,
• Mei-Ling Tan,
• Giacomo Renno,
• Augustina Jozeliūnaitė,
• J. Jonathan Nué-Martinez,
• Javier Lopez-Andarias,
• Naomi Sakai and
• Stefan Matile

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2023, 19, 1881–1894, doi:10.3762/bjoc.19.140

• introduced in 2017, followed by carbon nanotubes in 2019. Consistent with expectations from theory, anion–π catalysis on carbon allotropes generally increases with polarizability. Realized examples reach from enolate addition chemistry to asymmetric Diels–Alder reactions and autocatalytic ether cyclizations

• catalysis; electromicrofluidics; enolate addition; ether cyclizations; fullerenes; Introduction Anion–π catalysis was introduced ten years ago [1]. The idea is to stabilize anionic transition states on electron-deficient, π-acidic aromatic surfaces (Figure 1A). The true beginning is arguably in 2015

• because it took some time to find the benchmark reaction needed to develop the catalysts (Figure 2) [2]. With this operational enolate chemistry in hand, it quickly became clear that increasing π acidity at the same time decreases the stability of the catalyst [3][4][5]. This suggested that induced rather

Synthesis and biological evaluation of Argemone mexicana-inspired antimicrobials

• Jessica Villegas,
• Bryce C. Ball,
• Katelyn M. Shouse,
• Caleb W. VanArragon,
• Ashley N. Wasserman,
• Hannah E. Bhakta,
• Allen G. Oliver,
• Danielle A. Orozco-Nunnelly and
• Jeffrey M. Pruet

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2023, 19, 1511–1524, doi:10.3762/bjoc.19.108

• considered ways to further enhance this activity. We first explored the effects of structural modifications to berberine itself. The cationic iminium within berberine and its derivatives is susceptible to nucleophilic attack [10][14]. Through use of an acetone enolate, as well as partial or full reduction by

α-(Aminomethyl)acrylates as acceptors in radical–polar crossover 1,4-additions of dialkylzincs: insights into enolate formation and trapping

• Angel Palillero-Cisneros,
• Paola G. Gordillo-Guerra,
• Fernando García-Alvarez,
• Olivier Jackowski,
• Franck Ferreira,
• Fabrice Chemla,
• Joel L. Terán and
• Alejandro Perez-Luna

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2023, 19, 1443–1451, doi:10.3762/bjoc.19.103

• atom to zinc enables this SH2 process which represents a rare example of alkylzinc-group transfer to a tertiary α-carbonyl radical. The zinc enolate thus formed readily undergoes β-fragmentation unless it is trapped by electrophiles in situ. Enolates of substrates having free N–H bonds undergo

• enolate with electrophiles in protocols wherein all the reactive partners can be introduced from the start, given that dialkylzinc reagents offer a large functional group tolerance; and 3) the radical character of the process allows for the use of alkyl iodides as alkyl source in multicomponent reactions

• enolate and a new R• that propagates the radical chain (Scheme 1). Initiation occurs upon oxidation of the dialkylzinc reagent by oxygen. The feasibility of such 1,4-addition reactions is fully reliant on the ease of the intermediate enoxyl radical to undergo alkylzinc-group transfer. Secondary α-carbonyl

Photoredox catalysis harvesting multiple photon or electrochemical energies

• Mattia Lepori,
• Simon Schmid and
• Joshua P. Barham

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2023, 19, 1055–1145, doi:10.3762/bjoc.19.81

First synthesis of acylated nitrocyclopropanes

• Kento Iwai,
• Rikiya Kamidate,
• Khimiya Wada,
• Haruyasu Asahara and
• Nagatoshi Nishiwaki

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2023, 19, 892–900, doi:10.3762/bjoc.19.67

• proceeded, to produce furan 13 with a 46% yield (Scheme 6). The coordination of two carbonyl groups to the tin species facilitated the ring opening of the cyclopropane ring to afford betaine [7], then the oxygen atom of the enolate attacked the benzyl cation to construct a five-membered ring. The subsequent

Asymmetric tandem conjugate addition and reaction with carbocations on acylimidazole Michael acceptors

• Brigita Mudráková,
• Renata Marcia de Figueiredo,
• Jean-Marc Campagne and
• Radovan Šebesta

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2023, 19, 881–888, doi:10.3762/bjoc.19.65

• 10.3762/bjoc.19.65 Abstract We present here a stereoselective tandem reaction based on the asymmetric conjugate addition of dialkylzinc reagents to unsaturated acylimidazoles followed by trapping of the intermediate zinc enolate with carbocations. The use of a chiral NHC ligand provides chiral zinc

• obtained by other conjugate addition reactions. Keywords: acylimidazole; asymmetric catalysis; carbocation; conjugate addition; enolate; Introduction Asymmetric metal-catalyzed conjugate additions provide access to numerous chiral scaffolds. This type of C–C bond formation efficiently enables the

• excellent in asymmetric conjugate additions of dialkylzincs to acylimidazoles [25]. The initial reaction conditions were inspired by literature precedence on conjugate additions. As the first electrophile for trapping of the chiral enolate, we have used tropylium bistriflimide (Scheme 2). Following our

Synthesis of medium and large phostams, phostones, and phostines

• Jiaxi Xu

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2023, 19, 687–699, doi:10.3762/bjoc.19.50

• '-carboxylates 83 in 5–10% yield as byproducts. The major products 84 were generated via Michael addition and the nucleophilic addition–elimination of the carbanion of the generated enolate moiety, while the oxyanion of the enolate moiety attacked the phosphorus to form the byproducts 83 (Scheme 18) [40][41

Enolates ambushed – asymmetric tandem conjugate addition and subsequent enolate trapping with conventional and less traditional electrophiles

• Péter Kisszékelyi and
• Radovan Šebesta

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2023, 19, 593–634, doi:10.3762/bjoc.19.44

• years of development. The effort of our group to broaden possibilities to engage metal enolates in reactions with new electrophiles is described. The material is divided according to the organometallic reagent employed in the conjugate addition step, and thus to the particular metal enolate formed

• . Short information on applications in total synthesis is also given. Keywords: asymmetric catalysis; conjugate addition; electrophile; enolate; tandem reaction; Introduction The formation of complex chiral molecules is a crucial task of organic synthesis that enables the synthesis of pharmaceuticals

• stereogenic information, thus leading to chiral products. Enolate species are uniquely positioned for reactivity with a broad array of electrophiles and thus allowing quick and efficient construction of highly complex structures from readily available starting materials. Various polar organometallic reagents

Asymmetric synthesis of a stereopentade fragment toward latrunculins

• Benjamin Joyeux,
• Antoine Gamet,
• Nicolas Casaretto and
• Bastien Nay

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2023, 19, 428–433, doi:10.3762/bjoc.19.32

• oxidation in presence of DMP. The assembly of aldehyde 8 and methyl ketone 15 was envisaged through a stereoselective aldol reaction. After unsuccessful attempts of Mukaiyama aldol reactions with silyl enol ethers [28], we found that dicyclohexylboron enolate 20, made in situ from ketone 15 and Cy2BCl in

Group 13 exchange and transborylation in catalysis

• Dominic R. Willcox and
• Stephen P. Thomas

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2023, 19, 325–348, doi:10.3762/bjoc.19.28

• -hydroboration of the enone 29 with H-B-9-BBN to give an O-B-9-BBN enolate 30. Electrophilic cyanation of the enolate 30 with NCTS 31, and elimination gave the β-ketonitrile 33 and TsN(Ph)-9-B-BBN 34, which underwent B‒N/B‒H transborylation with HBpin to regenerate the catalyst and give TsN(Ph)-Bpin 35 (Scheme 8

• fluoride 50 to give the ester 51 and FBpin (Scheme 11). The H-B-9-BBN-catalysed 1,4-hydroboration of enones with HBpin was shown by Thomas, including the subsequent functionalisation of the intermediate Bpin-enolate 52 (Scheme 12) [76]. The proposed mechanism began by 1,4-hydroboration of the enone 29 with

• H-B-9-BBN, followed by B‒O/B‒H transborylation with HBpin to give the Bpin-enolate 52 and regenerate H-B-9-BBN (Scheme 12). Isotopic labelling with DBpin and H10Bpin supported this proposal. Fontaine reported that boric acid could be used as a precatalyst for the BH3-catalysed hydroboration of

Strategies to access the [5-8] bicyclic core encountered in the sesquiterpene, diterpene and sesterterpene series

• Cécile Alleman,
• Charlène Gadais,
• Laurent Legentil and
• François-Hugues Porée

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2023, 19, 245–281, doi:10.3762/bjoc.19.23

• )-SmIII enolate 147. The cyclooctane ring was then accessed through the (Z)-SmIII enolate aldol cyclization. The different organosamarium species generated during the cascade cyclization mechanism were hypothesized to drive the diastereoselectivity on each of the stereocenters created during the process

An accelerated Rauhut–Currier dimerization enabled the synthesis of (±)-incarvilleatone and anticancer studies

• Tharun K. Kotammagari,
• Sweta Misra,
• Sayantan Paul,
• Sunita Kunte,
• Rajesh G. Gonnade,
• Manas K. Santra and
• Asish K. Bhattacharya

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2023, 19, 204–211, doi:10.3762/bjoc.19.19

• accelerate the reaction. In conventional intermolecular RC reactions, the reaction proceeds by the intermolecular addition of a nucleophilic catalyst to the enone substrate to generate an enolate in the first step. In the second step the enolate ion attacks the other Michael acceptor at β-position in an

• outlined in Scheme 4. We proposed that (±)-rengyolone (3) undergoes a hydroxy-directed intermolecular conjugate addition [11][12][13][14][15] with another equivalent of (±)-rengyolone (3) (enone system) to highly selectively afford intermediate A. Via a rapid intramolecular Michael addition of enolate

• intermediate A tetrahydrofuran intermediate B with cis-fused ring systems is formed as seen in the existing literature [7]. A proton transfer of enolate moiety B yields another enolate C followed by the β-alkoxy elimination [17] of intermediate C to form intermediate D. The intermediate D on protonation leads

Synthetic study toward tridachiapyrone B

• Morgan Cormier,
• Florian Hernvann and
• Michaël De Paolis

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2022, 18, 1741–1748, doi:10.3762/bjoc.18.183

• deprotonation of 2-(α’-methoxy-γ-pyrone)-1,3-dithiane. The resulting vinylogous enolate intermediate was trapped with the electrophile 3, amounting to the one-pot preparation of compound 4, having a masked carbonyl function connecting both key fragments [27][28]. Isolated and characterized by Schmitz [17], the

• lithiocyclopentadiene and the enolate intercepted with an alkylating reagent to build the quaternary carbon of 6b (Scheme 2b). This one-pot procedure was reminiscent of our previous study describing the addition of an allylic carbanion, generated from allylstannane with n-BuLi, to 2 which was followed by the addition

• delocalized enolate intermediate 6a·Li. To that end, the addition of lithiocyclopentadiene to 2 was followed by the attendant quenching with a methylating reagent (MeI, Me2SO4, MeOTf) but a complex mixture of products was consistently obtained. To gather information on the reactivity of 6a·Li, the stabilized

Total synthesis of grayanane natural products

• Nicolas Fay,
• Rémi Blieck,
• Cyrille Kouklovsky and
• Aurélien de la Torre

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2022, 18, 1707–1719, doi:10.3762/bjoc.18.181

• proposes different disconnections. Newhouse identified a C1–C10 disconnection for a radical cyclization and a C6–C7 for an organolithium addition, allowing a convergent approach with A ring and C–D rings as key fragments. In this case, the bicyclo[3.2.1]octane is obtained by a Ni-catalyzed enolate/alkenyl

Redox-active molecules as organocatalysts for selective oxidative transformations – an unperceived organocatalysis field

• Elena R. Lopat’eva,
• Igor B. Krylov,
• Dmitry A. Lapshin and
• Alexander O. Terent’ev

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2022, 18, 1672–1695, doi:10.3762/bjoc.18.179

• ][72]. A recent achievement of the enantioselective hydroxylation of α‑aryl-δ-lactams by O2 is shown in Scheme 5 [73] as an example of such organocatalyzed reaction type. Triethyl phosphite is added to reduce a hydroperoxide, which is initially formed by the enolate oxidation with O2. In summary

Rhodium-catalyzed intramolecular reductive aldol-type cyclization: Application for the synthesis of a chiral necic acid lactone

• Motoyuki Isoda,
• Kazuyuki Sato,
• Kenta Kameda,
• Kana Wakabayashi,
• Ryota Sato,
• Hideki Minami,
• Yukiko Karuo,
• Atsushi Tarui,
• Kentaro Kawai and
• Masaaki Omote

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2022, 18, 1642–1648, doi:10.3762/bjoc.18.176

• the substrates through an η6 binding intermediate by DFT calculation [49]. Although another mechanism could not be denied in which a Z-enolate intermediate changes to an E-enolate under thermodynamic control, we propose the following mechanism on the basis of the above results (Scheme 3). The Rh–H

• complex 5 from [RhCl(cod)]2 and Et2Zn would generate predominantly the corresponding E-enolate 6 via 1,4-reduction, which is stabilized through η6 binding with benzene ring of the substrate. Subsequent transmetalation with zinc species 4 readily reacts with the carbonyl group to form the intramolecular C

• . eThe reaction was carried out using RhCl(PPh3)3 in THF at rt. Detection of metal-enolate and proposed mechanism of intramolecular cyclization. Synthetic route towards chiral necic acid lactone (2S,3S,4R)-2j. Conditions: a) CH3SO2NH2, AD-mix-β, t-BuOH, H2O. b) SO3·Py, Et3N, DMSO, CH2Cl2. c) DMAP, CH2Cl2

Synthetic study toward the diterpenoid aberrarone

• Liang Shi,
• Zhiyu Gao,
• Yiqing Li,
• Yuanhao Dai,
• Yu Liu,
• Lili Shi and
• Hong-Dong Hao

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2022, 18, 1625–1628, doi:10.3762/bjoc.18.173

• through the corresponding lithium enolate occurred from the convex face of the bicyclic ring system [37]. After these two continuous stereocenters were successfully installed, the expected challenging all-carbon quaternary center at C1 was constructed utilizing the Nagata reagent (Et2AlCN). By using this

Oxa-Michael-initiated cascade reactions of levoglucosenone

• Julian Klepp,
• Thomas Bousfield,
• Hugh Cummins,
• Sarah V. A.-M. Legendre,
• Jason E. Camp and
• Ben W. Greatrex

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2022, 18, 1457–1462, doi:10.3762/bjoc.18.151

• product 6n was also isolated (Table 1, entry 17), analogous to that reported for the reaction of 1, furfural and hydroxide in water [16]. The isolation of 6n was attributed to a slow second conjugate addition of the enolate (the reaction of 6 and 8, Scheme 1), while 7 was formed via an endocyclic

• presumed to start with an oxa-Michael initiated aldol reaction promoted by a methoxide nucleophile giving enone 6 via enolate 8 (Scheme 1). A Rauhut–Currier-type reaction of 6 with the addition of another equivalent of 8, followed by a subsequent double β-elimination leads to the observed product 5. When

A one-pot electrochemical synthesis of 2-aminothiazoles from active methylene ketones and thioureas mediated by NH₄I

• Shang-Feng Yang,
• Pei Li,
• Zi-Lin Fang,
• Sen Liang,
• Hong-Yu Tian,
• Bao-Guo Sun,
• Kun Xu and
• Cheng-Chu Zeng

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2022, 18, 1249–1255, doi:10.3762/bjoc.18.130

• can act as a bi-functional organocatalyst due to the existence of both Lewis base (NH2) and Brønsted acidic (COOH) sites. In the suggested mechanism, the carboxy group may polarize the carbonyl group of the active methylene ketone and the amino group as a Lewis base serves the formation of enolate to

Vicinal ketoesters – key intermediates in the total synthesis of natural products

• Marc Paul Beller and
• Ulrich Koert

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2022, 18, 1236–1248, doi:10.3762/bjoc.18.129

• species to the α-ketoester 15 (Scheme 3) [6]. The ketoester 15 was synthesized by a chiral pool approach starting from (+)-3-carene derived cycloheptenone 13 [7][8] and aldehyde 12 (accessible from (R)-Roche ester [9]) via the γ-lactone 14. The ketoester moiety was established by an enolate hydroxylation

• also be used in photochemical reactions, as shown by Gramain et al. in the synthesis of the pyrrolizidine alkaloid (rac)-isoretronecanol (69, Scheme 11) [26]. A Claisen condensation of the lithium enolate of N-acetylpyrrolidine (66) with diethyl oxalate gave the ketoester 67. Irradiation of compound 67