A direct ruthenium-catalyzed radical chloroalkylation of N-acyl oxazolidinones capitalizing on valence tautomerism of titanium enolates has been developed. The chloroalkylation method served as the centerpiece in the enantioselective total synthesis of trichloroleucine-derived marine natural product neodysidenin.Among more than four thousand halogenated natural products identified to date, 1 neodysidenin and other trichloroleucine-derived marine metabolites comprise a unique group. 2 For the majority of chlorinated natural products, a reasonable biosynthetic pathway involving an electrophilic chlorination can be proposed. 3 On the other hand, the trichloromethyl group in neodysidenin and related compounds arises from a remarkable direct chlorination of the pro-R methyl group of L-leucine carried out by nonheme Fe II halogenases requiring oxygen, chloride, and α-ketoglutarate for their activity. 4 In contrast, availability of synthetic methods for stereoselective trichloromethylation is highly limited, 5 whereas chlorinated natural products are attracting increasing attention as targets for chemical synthesis. 6 In this communication we describe a practical, efficient method for highly stereoselective direct chloroalkylation of titanium enolates and its application in the total synthesis of neodysidenin zakarian@chem.ucsb.edu.
Supporting Information Available:Experimental procedures and copies of 1 H and 13 C NMR spectra. This information is available free of charge via the Internet at http://pubs.acs.org. that can be readily adopted for the synthesis of other bioactive natural products in this class. 7 Guided by an extension of the classic Kharasch reaction8 described by Eguchi and coworkers, 9 our early efforts involved Ru(II)-catalyzed 10 redox trichloromethylation of trimethylsilyl enol ethers generated from chiral N-acyl oxazolidinones such as 1 (Scheme 1). 11 Although encouraging results were obtained with silyl ketene acetals (~50% yields, ds 3:1), the recent characterization of valence tautomerism in titanium enolates provided a conceptual foundation for the development of a direct radical chloroalkylation of N-acyl oxazolidinones.
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12,13The unconventional biradical character of titanium enolates described by Moreira and coworkers suggests that these intermediates should be efficient radical acceptors. 7 Indeed, when the Ti enolate derived from 1 14 was treated with BrCCl 3 in the presence of [Ph 3 P] 3 RuCl 2 as a readily available redox catalyst (7 mol%), product 2 was obtained in an essentially quantitative yield with exquisite stereocontrol (Scheme 1). The the mechanistic hypothesis in Scheme 1 is based on well-established redox activity of [Ph 3 P] 3 RuCl 2 widely used in atom-transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) 15 and is similar to that proposed by Eguchi for a related process with silyl enol ethers.9 A major advantage, however, is that the radical addition product should be stabilized by electron delocalization onto titanium, not feasible with silyl enol ethers. Th...