Productive chloroarene C-cl bond activation: palladium/phosphine-catalyzed methods for oxidation of alcohols and hydrodechlorination of chloroarenes

The palladium/phosphine-catalyzed productive chloroarene C-Cl bond activation provides general, efficient, and functional group friendly methods for the selective oxidation of alcohols and the hydrodechlorination of chloroarenes.     

An organometallic inhibitor for glycogen synthase kinase 3

Replacing natural products with kinetically inert metal complexes may lead to a new class of therapeutics in which a metal center plays the role of an innocent bystander, organizing the orientation of the organic ligands in the receptor space. As an example of this approach, a ruthenium complex is described that copies the binding mode of indolocarbazole protein kinase inhibitors and serves as a reversible, low-nanomolar inhibitor for glycogen synthase kinase 3 (GSK-3).     

Conformational analysis of methylphenidate: comparison of molecular orbital and molecular mechanics methods

Summary Methylphenidate (MP) binds to the cocaine binding site on the dopamine transporter and inhibits reuptake of dopamine, but does not appear to have the same abuse potential as cocaine. This study, part of a comprehensive effort to identify a drug treatment for cocaine abuse, investigates the effect of choice of calculation technique and of solvent model on the conformational potential energy surface (PES) of MP and a rigid methylphenidate (RMP) analogue which exhibits the same dopamine transporter binding affinity as MP. Conformational analysis was carried out by the AM1 and AM1/SM5.4 semiempirical molecular orbital methods, a molecular mechanics method (Tripos force field with the dielectric set equal to that of vacuum or water) and the HF/6-31G* molecular orbital method in vacuum phase. Although all three methods differ somewhat in the local details of the PES, the general trends are the same for neutral and protonated MP. In vacuum phase, protonation has a distinctive effect in decreasing the regions of space available to the local conformational minima. Solvent has little effect on the PES of the neutral molecule and tends to stabilize the protonated species. The random search (RS) conformational analysis technique using the Tripos force field was found to be capable of locating the minima found by the molecular orbital methods using systematic grid search. This suggests that the RS/Tripos force field/vacuum phase protocol is a reasonable choice for locating the local minima of MP. However, the Tripos force field gave significantly larger phenyl ring rotational barriers than the molecular orbital methods for MP and RMP. For both the neutral and protonated cases, all three methods found the phenyl ring rotational barriers for the RMP conformers/invertamers (denoted as cte, tte, and cta) to be: cte, tte> MP > cta. Solvation has negligible effect on the phenyl ring rotational barrier of RMP. The B3LYP/6-31G* density functional method was used to calculate the phenyl ring rotational barrier for neutral MP and gave results very similar to those of the HF/6-31G* method.     

Highly regioselective synthesis of tetrahydro-2H-1,3-thiazin-2-ones via rhodium-catalyzed carbonylation of N-alkylisothiazolidines

[reaction: see text] The [Rh(COD)Cl]2- and KI-catalyzed carbonylation of functionalized N-alkylisothiazolidines in toluene gives the corresponding tetrahydro-2H-1,3-thiazin-2-ones in good yield. The carbonylation reaction occurred site-selectively at the S-N bond of the isothiazolidine ring. The reaction is believed to proceed via oxidative addition, followed by CO insertion and reductive elimination to form the tetrahydro-2H-1,3-thiazin-2-one derivatives.     

Low temperature single crystal X-ray diffraction: advantages, instrumentation and applications

The benefits of carrying out single crystal X-ray diffraction (SXRD) experiments at low temperatures have long been recognised by the scientific community, as clearly demonstrated by the massive increase in publications reporting the use of low temperature SXRD in the past 15 years. This tutorial review will summarise the advantages, many of them now often forgotten by its practitioners or never known by the newcomers to the field, of performing single crystal X-ray diffraction experiments at low temperatures. The instrumentation currently available to university laboratories, which has been greatly improved over the past 5 years, will also be briefly described and a few different examples covering a range of applications will be presented.     

Spectrofluorimetric determination of surface-bound thiol groups and its application to the analysis of thiol-modified silicas

A sensitive spectofluorimetric method has been developed for the quantitative measurement of surface-bound thiol groups. The procedure is based on the quantitative esterification of the thiol group with Rhodamine B and its subsequent release from the solid by base hydrolysis for spectrofluorimetric determination. Application of the method to the analysis of thiol-modified nanoparticulate silicas yielded results that compared favourably against alternative approaches based on measurements of mercury capacity and iodometric titration of the thiol groups. Non-specific Rhodamine uptake, assessed using unmodified silica and C18-modified silica, did not significantly influence the analytical results. When applied to a typical 50 mg sample, the detection limit of the procedure was 1 nmole SH g(-1) silica.     

The Percolation Transition for the Zero-Temperature Stochastic Ising Model on the Hexagonal Lattice

On the planar hexagonal lattice , we analyze the Markov process whose state (t), in , updates each site v asynchronously in continuous time t0, so that _v (t) agrees with a majority of its (three) neighbors. The initial _v (0)'s are i.i.d. with P[ _v (0)=+1]=p[0,1]. We study, both rigorously and by Monte Carlo simulation, the existence and nature of the percolation transition as t and p1/2. Denoting by ⁺(t,p) the expected size of the plus cluster containing the origin, we (1) prove that ⁺(,1/2)= and (2) study numerically critical exponents associated with the divergence of ⁺(,p) as p1/2. A detailed finite-size scaling analysis suggests that the exponents and of this t= (dependent) percolation model have the same values, 4/3 and 43/18, as standard two-dimensional independent percolation. We also present numerical evidence that the rate at which (t)() as t is exponential.     

Synthesis of a novel C2-aryl substituted 1,2-unsaturated pyrrolobenzodiazepine

A novel C2-aryl 1,2-unsaturated PBD (14) has been prepared via an enol triflate intermediate (8). The regiochemistry of triflation is dependent upon the point at which the reaction is performed during the synthetic route.     

Dioxygenase-catalysed oxidation of monosubstituted thiophenes: sulfoxidation versus dihydrodiol formation

Toluene dioxygenase (TDO)-catalysed sulfoxidation, using Pseudomonas putida UV4, was observed for the thiophene substrates 1A-1N. The unstable thiophene oxide metabolites, 6A-6G, 6K-6N, spontaneously dimerised yielding the corresponding racemic disulfoxide cycloadducts 7A-7G, 7K-7N. Dimeric or crossed [4 + 2] cycloaddition products, derived from the thiophene oxide intermediates 6A and 6D or 6B and 6D, were found when mixtures of thiophene substrates 1A and 1D or 1B and 1D were biotransformed. The thiophene sulfoxide metabolite 6B was also trapped as cycloadducts 17 or 18 using stable dienophiles. Preferential dioxygenase-catalysed oxidation of the substituent on the thiophene ring, including exocyclic sulfoxidation (1H-1J) and cis-dihydroxylation of a phenyl substituent (1G and 1N), was also observed. An enzyme-catalysed deoxygenation of a sulfoxide in P. putida UV4 was noticed when racemic disulfoxide cyclo-adducts 7A, 7B and 7K were converted to the corresponding enantioenriched monosulfoxides 8A, 8B and 8K via a kinetic resolution process. The parent thiophene 1A and the 3-substituted thiophenes 1K-1N were also found to undergo ring dihydroxylation yielding the cis/trans-dihydrodiol metabolites 9A and 9K-9N. Evidence is provided for a dehydrogenase-catalysed desaturation of a heterocyclic dihydrodiol (9Kcis/9Ktrans) to yield the corresponding 2,3-dihydroxythiophene (24) as its preferred thiolactone tautomer (23). A simple model to allow prediction of the structure of metabolites, formed from TDO-catalysed bacterial oxidation of thiophene substrates 1, is presented.