Practical and General Alcohol Deoxygenation Protocol

Herein, we describe a practical protocol for the removal of alcohol functional groups through reductive cleavage of their benzoate ester analogs. This transformation requires a strong single electron transfer (SET) reductant and a means to accelerate slow fragmentation following substrate reduction. To accomplish this, we developed a photocatalytic system that generates a potent reductant from formate salts alongside Brønsted or Lewis acids that promote fragmentation of the reduced intermediate. This deoxygenation procedure is effective across structurally and electronically diverse alcohols and enables a variety of difficult net transformations. This protocol requires no precautions to exclude air or moisture and remains efficient on multigram scale. Finally, the system can be adapted to a one-pot benzoylation-deoxygenation sequence to enable direct alcohol deletion. Mechanistic studies validate that the role of acidic additives is to promote the key C(sp³)−O bond fragmentation step.     

Porphyrins with exocyclic rings. Part 22: Synthesis of deoxophylloerythroetioporphyrin (DPEP), three ring homologues, and five related nonpolar bacteriopetroporphyrins using a western ring closure and an improved b-bilene methodology

Dipyrrolic intermediates incorporating five-membered carbocyclic rings are easily prepared from cyclopenta[b]pyrroles, and this unit represents the southern half of the DPEP-type geoporphyrins found in organic-rich sediments such as oil shales and petroleum. Related dipyrroles with six-, seven- or eight-membered carbocyclic rings were shown to give b-bilenes when reacted with dipyrrylmethane carbaldehydes under mildly acidic conditions. Following deprotection of the terminal ester groups, cyclization with TFA-CH(OMe)₃ gave a series of ring homologues of deoxophylloerythroetioporphyrin (DPEP). The b-bilenes generated from the five-membered ring dipyrroles proved to be rather unstable and had to be used directly without purification. Cyclization gave DPEP contaminated with an etioporphyrin by-product, but these could be separated as the nickel(II) derivatives by flash chromatography. This approach gave superior yields of DPEP compared to previously reported methods. In addition, the methodology could be extended to the synthesis of related petroporphyrins, and a series of five molecular fossils derived from bacteriochlorophylls d were synthesized by this approach.     

Development of a 3-body:many-body integrated fragmentation method for weakly bound clusters and application to water clusters (H2O)(n = 3-10, 16, 17)

A 3-body:many-body integrated quantum mechanical (QM) fragmentation method for non-covalent clusters is introduced within the ONIOM formalism. The technique captures all 1-, 2-, and 3-body interactions with a high-level electronic structure method, while a less demanding low-level method is employed to recover 4-body and higher-order interactions. When systematically applied to 40 low-lying (H(2)O)(n) isomers ranging in size from n = 3 to 10, the CCSD(T):MP2 3-body:many-body fragmentation scheme deviates from the full CCSD(T) interaction energy by no more than 0.07 kcal mol(-1) (or <0.01 kcal mol(-1) per water). The errors for this QM:QM method increase only slightly for various low-lying isomers of (H(2)O)(16) and (H(2)O)(17) (always within 0.13 kcal mol(-1) of the recently reported canonical CCSD(T)/aug-cc-pVTZ energies). The 3-body:many-body CCSD(T):MP2 procedure is also very efficient because the CCSD(T) computations only need to be performed on subsets of the cluster containing 1, 2, or 3 monomers, which in the current context means the largest CCSD(T) calculations are for 3 water molecules, regardless of the cluster size.     

Probing the effects of heterogeneity on delocalized pi...pi interaction energies

Dimers composed of benzene (Bz), 1,3,5-triazine (Tz), cyanogen (Cy) and diacetylene (Di) are used to examine the effects of heterogeneity at the molecular level and at the cluster level on pi...pi stacking energies. The MP2 complete basis set (CBS) limits for the interaction energies (E(int)) of these model systems were determined with extrapolation techniques designed for correlation consistent basis sets. CCSD(T) calculations were used to correct for higher-order correlation effects (deltaE(CCSD)(T)(MP2)) which were as large as +2.81 kcal mol(-1). The introduction of nitrogen atoms into the parallel-slipped dimers of the aforementioned molecules causes significant changes to E(int). The CCSD(T)/CBS E(int) for Di-Cy is -2.47 kcal mol(-1) which is substantially larger than either Cy-Cy (-1.69 kcal mol(-1)) or Di-Di (-1.42 kcal mol(-1)). Similarly, the heteroaromatic Bz-Tz dimer has an E(int) of -3.75 kcal mol(-1) which is much larger than either Tz-Tz (-3.03 kcal mol(-1)) or Bz-Bz (-2.78 kcal mol(-1)). Symmetry-adapted perturbation theory calculations reveal a correlation between the electrostatic component of E(int) and the large increase in the interaction energy for the mixed dimers. However, all components (exchange, induction, dispersion) must be considered to rationalize the observed trend. Another significant conclusion of this work is that basis-set superposition error has a negligible impact on the popular deltaE(CCSD)(T)(MP2) correction, which indicates that counterpoise corrections are not necessary when computing higher-order correlation effects on E(int). Spin-component-scaled MP2 (SCS-MP2 and SCSN-MP2) calculations with a correlation-consistent triple-zeta basis set reproduce the trends in the interaction energies despite overestimating the CCSD(T)/CBS E(int) of Bz-Tz by 20-30%.     

Improving Hydrogen Adsorption Enthalpy Through Coordinatively Unsaturated Cobalt in Porous Polymers

The design and synthesis of a new porous organic polymer (POP) incorporated with cobalt carbonyl complexes through built‐in bipyridinic coordination sites for hydrogen storage are described. A thermal activation process was developed to remove the ligated carbonyl and carbon dioxide in order to expose the cobalt atomically inside of porous structure. Various spectroscopic and physical characterization techniques were used to study the coordinated Co sites and the POP's surface property. Upon thermal activation, this new cobalt‐containing POP showed improved hydrogen uptake capacity and isosteric heat of adsorption.     

Asymmetric Synthesis of (R)‐1‐Alkyl‐Substituted Tetrahydro‐ß‐carbolines Catalyzed by Strictosidine Synthases

Stereoselective methods for the synthesis of tetrahydro‐ß‐carbolines are of significant interest due to the broad spectrum of biological activity of the target molecules. In the plant kingdom, strictosidine synthases catalyze the C?C coupling through a Pictet–Spengler reaction of tryptamine and secologanin to exclusively form the (S)‐configured tetrahydro‐ß‐carboline (S)‐strictosidine. Investigating the biocatalytic Pictet–Spengler reaction of tryptamine with small‐molecular‐weight aliphatic aldehydes revealed that the strictosidine synthases give unexpectedly access to the (R)‐configured product. Developing an efficient expression method for the enzyme allowed the preparative transformation of various aldehydes, giving the products with up to >98 % ee. With this tool in hand, a chemoenzymatic two‐step synthesis of (R)‐harmicine was achieved, giving (R)‐harmicine in 67 % overall yield in optically pure form.     

Structure-based design of carboxybiphenylindole inhibitors of the ZipA-FtsZ interaction

Structural features of two weak inhibitors of the ZipA-FtsZ protein-protein interaction which were found to bind to overlapping but different areas of the key binding site were combined in one new series of carboxybiphenyl-indoles with improved inhibitory activity.     

Macrolactamization of glycosylated peptide thioesters by the thioesterase domain of tyrocidine synthetase

The 35 kDa thioesterase (TE) domain excised from the megadalton tyrocidine synthetase (Tyc Syn) retains autonomous capacity to macrocyclize peptidyl thioesters to D-Phe1-L-Leu10-macrolactams. Since a number of nonribosomal peptides undergo O-glycosylation events during tailoring to gain biological activity, the Tyc Syn TE domain was evaluated for cyclization capacity with glycosylated peptidyl-S-NAC substrates. First, Tyr7 was replaced with Tyr(beta-D-Gal) and Tyr(beta-D-Glc) as well as with Ser-containing beta-linked D-Gal, D-Glc, D-GlcNAc, and D-GlcNH2, and these new analogs were shown to be cyclized with comparable kcat/Km catalytic efficiency. Similarly, Gal- or tetra-O-acetyl-Gal-Ser could also be substituted at residues 5, 6, and 8 in the linear decapeptidyl-S-NAC sequences and cyclized without substantial loss in catalytic efficiency by Tyc Syn TE. The cyclic glycopeptides retained antibiotic activity as membrane perturbants in MIC assays, opening the possibility for library construction of cyclic glycopeptides by enzymatic macrocyclization.     

Porphyrins with exocyclic rings. Part 4. An improved one step synthesis of cyclopenta[b]pyrroles

Cyclopentanone condensed with phenylhydrazones 5 , or oximes 6 , in the presence of zinc dust, sodium propionate and propionic acid at 150° to give cyclopenta[b]pyrroles 7 in good yields. This chemistry was extended to the synthesis of pyrrolic products from 1-indanone, 2-indanone and 2-methylcyclopentanone. Benzyl 3-methylcyclopenta[b]pyrrole-2-carboxylate was found to react regioselectively with lead tetraacetate to give the corresponding 6-acetoxy derivative and subsequent acid-catalyzed condensations with 5-unsubsti-tuted pyrrole-2-carboxylates afforded a series of synthetically valuable dipyrroles 18a-c.