ASAP Friday

A couple of ASAP articles from JACS stood out for me this morning.

The first is an interesting Nazarov cyclization followed by a Wagner-Meerwein rearrangement reported by Alison Frontier. Depending on the substitution, the path of the Nazarov is altered and the reaction is terminated by either a hydride shift or an aryl shift. Interesting paper well worth reading the details.

Jie Huang and Alison J. Frontier, JACS DOI: 10.1021/ja0716148

Mukund Sibi reported a novel organocatalytic method for the conjugate addition of hydroxylamines. The catalyst provides for both hydrogen bonding activation of the substrate and hydrogen bond-directivity for the incoming nucleophile.

Mukund P. Sibi and Kennosuke Itoh, JACS DOI: 10.1021/ja071739c

I have returned

I have returned to the US after spending a little more than two weeks in France. I enjoyed food, wine and chemistry during my visit. I was very fortunate to taste some excellent wine including the bottle you see to the right! It was amazing. Was it worth the price? Well, in my opinion, no wine is worth that much, but it truly was exceptional. I am now playing catch up with all the work that was left undone here.

I suppose on a chemistry blog, I should post some chemistry. Among the plethora of fine literature contributions I missed while I was gone was this interesting organocatalytic cascade reaction reported by List.

Jian Zhou and Benjamin List JACS ASAP. DOI: 10.1021/ja072134j