Recent Studies of Hypernuclei Formation with Electron Beams at MAMI

At the Mainz Microtron MAMI exploratory experiments on the spectroscopy of mesonic weak decays (MWD) of electroproduced Λ-hypernuclei were performed. A unique setup was realized to use the broad momentum-band kaon spectrometer Kaos at zero degree angle with respect to the high-intensity electron beam direction to tag strangeness producing processes. A sample of order 10³ MWD from a beryllium target was collected by the coincidence technique with the high-resolution multi-spectrometer facility of the A1 Collaboration. It is conjectured that this sample contains monochromatic two-body decays from stopped hyperfragment decays as well as a wide momentum distribution of quasi-free produced Λ- and Σ-hyperon decays and three-body decays from hyperfragments. Stopped hyperfragments will be identified as monochromatic peaks in the π ^? momentum spectrum from which their masses can be extracted with a precision of 50 keV/c ².     

A convenient stereoselective synthesis of 5-hydroxy-3-oxoesters and 3-hydroxy-5-oxoesters

A biocatalytic approach was employed for the asymmetric reduction of sterically demanding ketones to prepare 3-hydroxy-5-oxo-5-phenylpentanoates and 5-hydroxy-3-oxo-5-phenylpentanoates. Screening a collection of microorganisms led to the identification of stereocomplementary microbial strains that provide access to both enantiomers of 3-hydroxy-5-oxo-5-phenylpentanoates and 5-hydroxy-3-oxo-5-phenylpentanoates with high enantiomeric excess (up to 99% ee). Moreover, the application of Saccharomyces cerevisiae gave two diastereomers of 3,5-dihydroxy-5-phenylpentanoates with high enantiomeric excess (up to 99% ee). The applicability of the identified strains was demonstrated by transforming the obtained dihydroxy ester into the chemically valuable lactone (4S,6R)-tetrahydro-4-hydroxy-6-phenyl-pyran-2-one.