Another Nazarov? Or not.

Zhang-Jie Shi and co-workers at Peking University have reported in Organic Letters on a palladium catalyzed cyclization process, which at first glance looked like it may be a Nazarov reaction but they proved that it probably is not a Nazarov reaction because of the observed kinetic isotope effect when they replaced the aryl hydrogens with deuteriums.

OL paper

DFT calculations of a retro-Nazarov

Satoshi Inagaki and co-workers at Gifu University have reported in JACS on some DFT calculations of a retro-Nazarov reaction.

JACS paper

Chromium cascade

Nobuhara Iwasawa and co-workers at Tokyo Institute of Technology have reported in ACIE on a chromium catalyzed cascade.

ACIE paper

Atropurpuran progress

Richard Hsung and co-workers have reported in Organic Letters on their progress towards atropurpuran.

OL paper

Roseophilin formal synthesis

Junbiao Chang and co-workers at Zhengzhou University have reported in JOC on a formal synthesis of roseophilin.

JOC paper

Eight membered ring from four membered ring

Rick Danheiser and co-workers at MIT have reported in Tetrahedron on a way to make cyclo-octatrienes.

Tetrahedron paper

Electrocyclization cascade

Martin Smith and co-workers at Oxford have reported in Chemical Science on an electrocyclization that involves the initial formation of an imine.

Chemical Science paper

Hamayne synthesis

Martin Banwell and co-workers at Australian National University have reported in Organic Letters on their synthesis of hamayne featuring an electrocyclic ring-opening.

OL paper

Asymmetric Nazarov

Magnus Rueping and co-worker from Aachen University have reported in Chemical Communications on an asymmetric Nazarov reaction that involves the addition of a bromine using N-triflylphosphoramide as the protonating source.  The substrate looks like the dienone that Dirk Trauner and co-worker used when he reported a scandium catalyzed Nazarov reaction excluding the bromination part.

Chem Comm paper

[8+2] Cycloaddition

Miguel Sierra and co-workers at Universidad Complutense de Madrid have reported in Organic Letters on the use of DFT calculations and experimental results to understand the [8+2] cycloaddition of a ketene and 8-azaheptafulvenes.

OL paper