[6+4] vs [4+2]

Kendall Houk and co-workers have reported in JACS on a biosynthetic study of heronamide A using DFT calculations to study the [6+4] cycloaddition.

JACS paper

Correlating chemical shift of O-H proton with stereochemistry of masked 1,2-diols

Jason Chen and co-workers from Iowa State have reported in JOC on the chemical shifts of an O-H proton of masked syn- and anti- 1,2-diols.

JOC paper

Evans enolate in solution

David Collum and colleague have reported in JACS on the solution structure of an Evans enolate.

JACS paper

Mechanistic study of the asymmetric Nazarov cyclization

Kendall Houk and co-workers reported in JACS on a mechanistic investigation on a reaction discovered by Tius: the asymmetric Nazarov cyclization catalyzed by a thiourea-primary amine catalyst.

JACS paper

Mollenynes B-E

Tadeusz Molinski and co-workers have reported in JACS on the isolation and characterization of mollenynes B-E.

JACS paper

Diels-Alder approach to galbulimima alkaloids

Here’s a paper related to the galbulimima alkaloids, which were made famous by Lewis Mander’s group. Regan Thomson and co-workers report in JACS on the synthesis of galbulimima alkaloids. A nice collaboration with DFT calculations from Dean Tantillo’s group shows the orbital interactions in the transition state structures of the Diels-Alder reactions.

JACS paper

Newman-Kwart reaction mechanism

Hafize Ozcan and co-workers from Trakya University in Turkey have reported in Tetrahedron on an interesting mechanistic investigation of the Newman-Kwart reaction.

Tetrahedron paper

Sufur ylide chemistry – intramolecular cyclopropanation

Nuno Maulide and co-workers from the University of Vienna have reported in JOC on an intramolecular cyclopropanation from a sulfur slide precursor and what follows is a nice mechanistic investigation.

JOC paper

Domino acylation Diels-Alder

Jeffrey Aube (University of Kansas) and Dean Tantillo (UC Davis) have teamed up to study the mechanism of a domino acylation-Diels Alder reaction.

OL paper

C-H activation within the ruthenium complex

Another Houk collaboration – this time with Grubbs’ lab. They studied the mechanism of the carboxylate assisted C-H activation of the metathesis catalyst. The SDD basis set was used to approximate the orbitals of ruthenium in this report.

JACS paper