Colorful Friedel-Crafts chemistry of meso-tetraarylporphyrins. An unexpected route to porphyrinic spiro dimers

Under Friedel-Crafts conditions, meso-tetraarylporphyrins give porphyrin spiro dimers in good yield. This reaction involves acylation, acid-catalyzed cyclization, and dimerization. A stable dimer possessing three additional six-membered rings could be isolated and its structure determined. By modifying the substrate and reagents, intermediates could be isolated and characterized. The reactivity of the substrates, the side-reactions, and the concentration requirements to form the dimers, all explain why this reaction remained apparently unexplored in the widely used meso-tetraarylporphyrin series. [reaction: see text]     

Shot noise sets the limit of quantification in electrochemical measurements

Detection of single molecules, particles, and rapid redox events is a challenge of electrochemical investigations and requires either an amplification strategy or significant averaging for the electrochemical current to exceed the noise level. We consider the minimum number of electrons required to reach the limit of quantification in these electrochemical measurements. A survey of the literature indicates that the state-of-the-art limit in current detection for different types of measurements (e.g. voltammetry, single-molecule redox cycling, ion channel recordings of single molecules, metal nanoparticle collision, and phase nucleation) is independent of the nature of the measurement and increases linearly with reciprocal response time, Δt^?1, over ～5 orders of magnitude (from ～10 to ～10⁶ s^?1). We demonstrate that the practical limit of quantification requires cumulative measurement of ～2100 electrons during Δt and is determined by statistics of counting electrons, that is, the shot noise in the current.     

Acid-Catalyzed Amine-Borane Reduction of Nitrite

The rate of reduction of nitrite by trimethylamine-borane was followed by observing the decrease in nitrite absorbance under pseudo-first-order conditions. The reaction is acid-catalyzed and exhibits a first-order dependence on both amine-borane and total nitrite concentration. The molar equivalence of NaNO(2) to (CH(3))(3)NBH(3) = 2:1. Equimolar amounts of hydrogen and nitrous oxide are formed, and the molar ratio of nitrite reacted to N(2)O produced is 2:1. In concentrated HCl or H(2)SO(4), a correlation of rate with the Hammett acidity function, h(o), is observed. The reaction is subject to a pronounced inversesolvent isotope effect (k(D)()2(O)/k(H)()2(O) approximately 2.7) and a modest normal substrate effect (k((CH)()3())()3(N.BH)()3/k((CH)()3())()3(N.BD)()3 approximately 1.4). The reaction is first-order in H(3)O(+) in the region pH 0.7-2.7, but a second-order dependence is observed above pH 4 with the transition occurring at pH approximately pK(a) for HNO(2). Results are consistent with a mechanistic model involving preequilibration protonation of molecular nitrous acid followed by rate-limiting hydride attack on H(2)ONO(+) or free NO(+) to produce nitrosyl hydride as a reactive intermediate.     

Ordering the reductive and cytochrome P450 oxidative steps in demethylsterigmatocystin formation yields general insights into the biosynthesis of aflatoxin and related fungal metabolites

The biosynthesis of the potent environmental carcinogen aflatoxin B1 involves ca. 15 steps beyond the first polyketide intermediate. Central among these is the rearrangement of the anthraqinone versicolorin A to the xanthone demethylsterigmatocystin. Genetic evidence strongly suggests that two enzymes are required for this process, a cytochrome P450, AflN, and a probable NADPH-dependent oxidoreductase, AflM. Given the overall redox change evident in this skeletal rearrangement, two rounds of oxidation and a reduction necessarily occur. Earlier experiments indicated that reductive deoxygenation of versicolorin A is not the first step. In the present report we consider a mechanistic alternative that AflM-mediated reduction is instead the last of these three reactions prior to formation of the xanthone intermediate. To this end, 9-hydroxydihydrodemethylsterigmatocystin was prepared by total synthesis as was its 9-deoxy analogue, an established aflatoxin precursor. During the final isolation of the "angular" synthetic xanthone targets it was found that acid catalysis promoted their isomerization to thermodynamically favored "linear" xanthones. Whole-cell and ground-cell incubations of the 9-hydroxy- and 9-deoxyxanthones were conducted with a mutant strain of Aspergillus parasiticus blocked at the first step of the pathway and examined for their ability to support aflatoxin production. The 9-deoxyxanthone gave dramatically enhanced levels of the mycotoxin. The 9-hydroxyxanthone, on the other hand, afforded no detectable increase in aflatoxins above controls, indicating that reductive deoxygenation at C-9 of a xanthone precursor does not take place in aflatoxin biosynthesis. Constraints imposed by earlier studies and the experiments in this paper serve to eliminate simple and intuitive conversions of versicolorin A to demethylsterigmatocystin and lead inescapably to a more subtle reaction sequence of oxidation-reduction-oxidation. Previous puzzling observations of extensive A-ring hydrogen exchange in the course of the rearrangement of versicolorin A to demethylsterigmatocystin have now been explained by a new mechanism that is consistent with all extant data. We propose that P450-mediated aryl epoxidation (AflN) initially disrupts the aromatic A-ring of versicolorin A. Oxirane opening enables A-ring proton exchange, as does the subsequent AflM-mediated reductive step. A second cycle of P450 oxidation (AflN), this time a Baeyer-Villiger cleavage, enables decarboxylation and the formation of demethylsterigmatocystin. Mechanistic and stereoelectronic principles that underlie this proposal are described and may prove general as illustrated in biogenetic hypotheses for four other fungal anthraquinone --> xanthone transformations.     

Thermochemistry of bis-arene- and arenetricarbonyl-chromium compounds containing hexamethylbenzene, 1,3,5-trimethylbenzene and naphthalene.

Microcalorimetric measurements at elevated temperatures of the heats of thermal decomposition and iodination have led to values of the standard enthalpies of formation of the following crystalline compounds (values given in kJ mol^?1) at 298K: [Cr(η⁶-1,3,5-C₆H₃(CH₃)₃)₂] = (63±12); [Cr(η⁶-C₆(CH₃)₆)₂] : -(88±12); [Cr(1,2,3,4,4a,8a-η-C₁₀H₈)₂] = (407±11); [Cr(CO)₃(1,2,3,4,4a,8a-η-C₁₀H₈)] = -(258±8). Separate measurements by the vacuum sublimation microcalorimetric technique gave the following values for the enthalpy of sublimation at 298K (kJ mol^?1) : [Cr(η⁶-1,3,5-C₆H₃(CH₃)₃)₂] = (104±1); [Cr(η⁶-C₆(CH₃)₆)₂] = (119±4); [Cr(CO)₃(1,2,3,4,4a,8a-η-C₁₀H₈)] = (107±3). From these and other data, the bond enthalpy contributions of the metal-ligand bonds in the gaseous metal complexes were evaluated as follows: [(η₆-C₆(CH₃)₆)-Cr] (155±7); [(η⁶-C₆H₃(CH₃)₃)-Cr] (151±6); [(1,2,3,4,4a, 8a-η-C₁₀H₈)-Cr](145±6) kJ mol^?1]The question of the transferability of the enthalpy contributions of chromium—ligand bonds between organochronium complexes is discussed with aid of information from structural and spectroscopic investigation. The limitations of the procedure are defined.The thermodynamic data are used to discuss various substitution, redistribution and exchange reaction of Cr(η-arene)₂ and [Cr(CO)₃(η-arene)] compounds.     

The effect of minor-groove hydrogen-bond acceptors and donors on the stability and replication of four unnatural base pairs

The stability and replication of DNA containing self-pairs formed between unnatural nucleotides bearing benzofuran, benzothiophene, indole, and benzotriazole nucleobases are reported. These nucleobase analogues are based on a similar scaffold but have different hydrogen-bond donor/acceptor groups that are expected to be oriented in the duplex minor groove. The unnatural base pairs do not appear to induce major structural distortions and are accommodated within the constraints of a B-form duplex. The differences between these unnatural base pairs are manifest only in the polymerase-mediated extension step, not in base-pair stability or synthesis. The benzotriazole self-pair is extended with an efficiency that is only 200-fold less than a correct natural base pair. The data are discussed in terms of available polymerase crystal structures and imply that further modifications may result in unnatural base pairs that can be both efficiently synthesized and extended, resulting in an expanded genetic alphabet.     

Chemical markup,XML, and the World Wide Web. 4. CML schema

A revision to Chemical Markup Language (CML) is presented as a XML Schema compliant form, modularized into nonchemical and chemical components. STMML contains generic concepts for numeric data and scientific units, while CMLCore retains most of the chemical functionality of the original CML 1.0 and extends it by adding handlers for chemical substances, extended bonding models and names. We propose extension via new namespaced components for chemical queries, reactions, spectra, and computational chemistry. The conformance with XML schemas allows much greater control over datatyping, document validation, and structure.     

Ground states of molecules. 53.MNDO calculations for molecules containing chlorine

MNDO calculations of heats of formation, dipole moments, ionization potentials, and structures are reported for a wide range of compounds containing chlorine in its characteristic valence state (Cl^I) and one or more of the elements H, B, Be, C, N, O, and F. The calculated errors in the heats of formation and the dipole moments are not significantly greater than those previously reported for compounds containing no chlorine. First vertical ionization potentials were on average 0.95 eV too high. The ordering of higher cationic states was found to be correct, even for species such as Cl₂O, Cl₂, and HOCl, where ab initio–Koopmans' theorem calculations predict the incorrect ordering. The calculated energies and geometries of compounds such as CIF₃ are qualitatively incorrect, probably because of the lack of 3d atomic orbitals in the orbital basis set.