A facile total synthesis of nonsymmetrical 14-membered macrocyclic bis-lactone, 4-ketoclonostachydiol has been demonstrated in a convergent approach. The synthetic strategy has been unambiguously successful towards incorporating all the three stereogenic centers present in the molecule with an overall yield of 0.9%. The key synthetic step includes MacMillan hydroxylation and Grubbs ring-closing metathesis reactions to furnish the core skeleton.Since decades, isolated marine natural products have been a source of numerous pharmacologically active compounds. 1 Among their many classes, in particular, fungi are very well known to produce several active secondary metabolites. 2 Moreover, in 2006 Munro et al. have identified a marine alga-derived fungus from New Zealand as Gliocladium sp., which showed to contain the metabolite 4-ketoclonostachydiol (1), strongly cytotoxic against P388 cells (IC 50 0.55 μM). The studies also revealed that 1 has stronger antimicrobial activity than the known clonostachydiol (2) 3 ( Figure 1) against Bacillus subtilis, Trichophyton mentagrophytes, and Cladosporium resinae. 4 In 2009, She et al. 5 have revised and established the absolute configuration for 1 as 5S,10S,13S instead of 5R,10R,13R by chemical synthesis. The synthesis includes Yamaguchi lactonization, Mitsunobu, and Sharpless asymmetric dihydroxylation reactions as the key steps. 5 In continuation of our interest and effort towards the synthesis of biologically active marine natural products from such family, 6 the synthesis of 4-ketoclonostachydiol (1) was attempted in a facile and straightforward manner. Herein, we report a stereocontrolled total synthesis of 1 in a convergent fashion as depicted in the retrosynthetic strategy (Scheme 1). As outlined in the strategy, the formation of 14-membered macrocycle of 1 was envisaged by ring-closing metathesis (RCM) of 3, wherein all the required chiral centers are in place. Esterification reaction between the alcohol 4 and the acid 7 leads to compound 3. And to begin with, alcohol 5 and diethyl L-(+)-tartrate (6), respectively, would be used for the preparations of 4 and 7 using routine reaction steps. Figure 1 Structure of 4-ketoclonostachydiol (1) and clonostachydiol (2)We began our synthesis towards the intermediate 4 from the commercially available hex-1-enol (5) (Scheme 2). Aldehyde 8 was obtained in six reaction steps 7 from 5 in an overall yield of 42%. Then, aldehyde 8 was subjected to MacMillan α-hydroxylation 8 in the presence of L-proline and nitrosobenzene, followed by rapid reduction and cleavage of the N-O bond providing the desired diol 9 in high enantioselectivity of 97%.Selective tosylation of the primary alcohol 9 using tosyl chloride and triethylamine 9 furnished the alcohol 10 in 85% yield. The expected epoxide 11 was obtained using K 2 CO 3 in methanol in 90% yield. Subsequently, opening of the epoxide 11 by trimethlysulfonium methylide, which was prepared from trimethylsulfonium iodide and n-BuLi produced the required allylic alcohol 12 10 in 80% yield. The al...