j115or through radical degradation of functional groups present in the amino acid or peptide building block.
Hydrogen Atom Transfer ReactionsHydrogen transfer reactions offer certain advantages as they allow for the direct substitution of nonactivated hydrogens both in carbon-carbon and carbonheteroatom coupling reactions. Although amino acids, and in particular peptides, can exhibit a broad number of carbon-hydrogen bonds capable of undergoing homolytic cleavage, a high degree of regio-and chemoselectivity is often observed. In general, hydrogen atom transfer reactions show high selectivities to form the most stabilized radical, which is in most cases the captodative a-carbon-centered radical. Both with the amino function as the free base or as N-amido derivatives, the unpaired spin density of a-carbon-centered amino acid radicals is extensively delocalized as a combined resonance effect from the electron-withdrawing (capto) carboxy group and the electron-donating (dative) amino or amido group, respectively. In contrast, a-radical formation of protonated or quaternized amino acid derivatives is less favored due to the lack of dative resonance stabilization (Figure 3.2) [1].Easton et al. studied the radical formation behavior of different N-acyl amino acid methyl esters and their relative stabilities [2]. Contrary to the expectation that tertiary radicals are more stable than secondary ones, in the a-bromination reaction using Nbromosuccinimide, the reaction of the glycine derivative was faster than the bromination of corresponding alanine and valine derivatives. This phenomenon has been attributed to the destabilizing effects of nonbonding interactions in the different radical species. The stabilization of the captodative a-radical results from overlap of the semioccupied p-orbital with the p-orbitals of the amido and the methoxycarbonyl groups, which is maximal in a planar conformation. In comparison to the glycinyl radical, the alaninyl radical will thereby be destabilized due to the nonbonding interaction between the methyl side-chain and the amido oxygen; even stronger destabilizing effects result from nonbonding interactions with the sterically more demanding isopropyl group in the valinyl radical. By this means, N-methylation causes also destabilization, so that both alanine and sarcosine derivatives show comparable reaction rates; on the other, hand methyl pyroglutaminate, relatively free R Figure 3.