Austinol and dehydroaustinol

Clay Wang and co-workers at USC have reported in JACS on the biosynthesis determination of two meroterpenoids.

JACS paper

Brevisulcenal F

Brevisulcenal F has been isolated from a dinoflagellate. Masayuki Satake and co-workers from the University of Tokyo have isolated and characterized this deadly compound, which killed many fish in New Zealand.

JACS paper

Vinblastine analogs

Dale Boger and colleagues have reported in Organic Letters on the functionalization of alkenes using iron. When I first saw vinblastine I thought of Dale Boger because he does so much work on this compound and it looks like I was thinking the right person.

OL paper

Loss of 2 x N2 to form carbenes

Duncan Wardrop and co-worker from the University of Illinois in Chicago have reported in Organic Letters on an interesting approach to form a carbene by presumably forming a tetraazafulvene intermediate, which breaks down to the carbene by losing two molecules of nitrogen (ie:  N2).  At first I wondered how scary this reaction is because of the gain of entropy, but it looks pretty straight forward:  they just add DIC (diisopropylcarbodiimide) to the tetrazole and then load the reaction mixture directly on a column for purification.

OL paper

Towards actinophyllic acid from radical cascade

Tsuyoshi Taniguchi and co-workers at Kanazawa University have reported in Organic Letters on their progress towards actinophyllic acid via a radical cascade.

OL paper

Cermizine B synthesis

Rich Carter and co-workers at Oregon State have reported in Organic Letters on the synthesis of cermizine.

OL paper

Isatisine A synthesis

Zhixiang Xie and co-workers from Lanzhou University have reported in Organic Letters on the synthesis of isatisine A.

OL paper

Anisatin synthesis

Tohru Fukuyama  and co-workers have reported in Organic Letters on the synthesis of anisatin via a Diels-Alder.

OL paper

[2+2+2] for endoperoxides

Tehshik Yoon and co-workers at the University of Wisconsin have reported in Organic Letters on a [2+2+2] cyclization approach to form endoperoxides using oxygen (ie:  O2).

OL paper

Mevashuntin synthesis

Christopher Moody and co-worker from the University of Nottingham have reported in Organic Letters on the synthesis of mevashuntin.

OL paper