Design and Synthesis of 1-Benzyl-3-(a-hydroxy-(un)substituted benzylidene)pyrrolidine-2,4-diones as Potential Herbicides

The inhibitors of 4-hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase (HPPD, EC 1.13.11.27) are an new kind of herbicides.[1]Generally, in structure, potent herbicides of this kind must possess: (1) a tricarbonyl methane structure and one of the three carbonyl groups must be a subustituted benzoyl group; (2) the compound must be able to enolise so that the enolate is capable of inhibiting HPPD enzyme by competitive combination with Fe2+, the reaction center of HPPD enzyme.[2]Recently, we noticed that the 3-acyltetramic acids form an expanding group of antibiotics and pigments from micro-organisms,[3] they display a range of biological activities[4] and all of this kind compounds possess all of the characters mentioned above. Tests of their antimicrobial activities indicated that the structure of the acyl substituent at the 3-position was important to many typical antibiotics.[4～6] These characters stimulated us to study this kind of compounds so as to discover new herbicides. In this report, we synthesized a series of compounds 3 and tested their herbicidal activities to investigate their structure-activity relationships.

Design and Synthesis of 1-Benzyl-3-(a-hydroxy-(un)substituted benzylidene)pyrrolidine-2,4-diones as Potential Herbicides

The inhibitors of 4-hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase (HPPD, EC 1.13.11.27) are an new kind of herbicides.[1]Generally, in structure, potent herbicides of this kind must possess: (1) a tricarbonyl methane structure and one of the three carbonyl groups must be a subustituted benzoyl group; (2) the compound must be able to enolise so that the enolate is capable of inhibiting HPPD enzyme by competitive combination with Fe2 , the reaction center of HPPD enzyme.[2]Recently, we noticed that the 3-acyltetramic acids form an expanding group of antibiotics and pigments from micro-organisms,[3] they display a range of biological activities[4] and all of this kind compounds possess all of the characters mentioned above. Tests of their antimicrobial activities indicated that the structure of the acyl substituent at the 3-position was important to many typical antibiotics.[4～6] These characters stimulated us to study this kind of compounds so as to discover new herbicides. In this report, we synthesized a series of compounds 3 and tested their herbicidal activities to investigate their structure-activity relationships.