v group, Sharu and Pradeep and the present members Ashaba, Chris, Dan for all the help and support. Sharu, Pradeep and myself have always been there for one another and taught ourselves and each other many tools in chemistry and had a lot of fun time. I would like to thank Ashish for being there with me whenever I needed him and making life easy. I would like to thank all my friends Nisarga, Abhinaba and Suman for their support and encouragement. I would like to specially thank Sampada for helping me for formatting this thesis. This would have not been possible without the support and blessings of my parents Shri. Shiwaji and Smt. Sumadevi, I cannot thank my wife and kids enough for being supportive and making my life wonderful and keep me working towards my goal. In the end I would like to thank all the people I have missed and who have directly or indirectly helped me in achieving my dream. vi ABSTRACT Nature continuously provides fascinating and complicated structures which offer synthetic chemists amazing opportunities for the design of new methods for the natural product synthesis. Nitrogen containing aza-heterocycles are of unparalleled importance in natural product, bioorganic and medicinal chemistry. Pyridine in particular is one of the most common aza-heterocycles encountered in natural products, medicinal and materials chemistry. Pyridine derivatives also serve as precursors to functionalized piperidines, which are likewise common structural motifs in bioactive and functionalized materials.Thus, developing synthetic methods suitable for the manipulation of pyridine ring systems remains an important objective in the organic chemistry community.We approached this objective by two different routes. In the first method, we used the nucleophilicity of the benzylic position of the 4-alkyl pyridine substrates to engage in gold (I) catalyzed 5 or 6-endo dig cyclizations with attached alkynyl amide groups.Processing of the resulting cycloadducts under hydrolytic conditions then afforded substituted pyridines with functionalized lactams.In the second approach, we investigated the feasibility of Pd-catalyzed cyclization of 3-substituted pyridines. It was envisioned that Pd(0) catalysts could react with alkyne substituents positioned along the pyridine periphery such that a nucleophilic alkynyl moiety would be generated. Activation of the pyridine by N-alkylation or acylation would then result in intramolecular cyclization. Rather than the desired reaction pathway, however, only products of alkyne hydroarylation were observed.