Absolute Asymmetric Synthesis Involving Chiral Symmetry Breaking in Diels–Alder Reaction

Total Synthesis of Keramaphidin B and Ingenamine by Base-Catalyzed Diels-Alder Reaction Using Dynamic Regioselective Crystallization

The control of the selectivity is a central issue in the total synthesis of complex natural products. In this paper, we report the total synthesis of (±)-keramaphidin B and (±)-ingenamine. The key reaction is a DMAP-catalyzed Diels-Alder reaction in which the regioselectivity is completely controlled by dynamic crystallization. Our synthesis successfully demonstrates that dynamic crystallization can be an alternative when the selectivity is not controlled by either kinetic or thermodynamic approaches in solution.

Conglomerate Crystallization in the Cambridge Structural Database (2020-2021)

Conglomerate crystals are materials capable of undergoing spontaneous resolution and were responsible for the discovery of molecular chirality. Their relevance to modern chemical and crystallographic sciences has been hindered by the difficulty in identifying and searching materials with this characteristic ability to spontaneously bias their own enantioenrichment. With the release of the November 2021 distribution of the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) (version 5.43), a fresh quantity of chiral conglomerate crystals is expected to have been published in the CSD without identification. Indeed, no crystals in the CSD have been identified as a spontaneously resolving conglomerate crystal in their crystallographic information file since the 2019 release, despite the deposition of over 108,000 new crystal structures into the database over the same time period. A manual inspection of crystals deposited between 2020 and 2021 was conducted to identify 343 new chiral materials which exhibit conglomerate crystallization behavior. It is hoped that the continued manual curation of this list will aid those in the crystallographic and synthetic communities to study and exploit this spontaneous enantioenrichment behavior.

Identifying a Hidden Conglomerate Chiral Pool in the CSD

Conglomerate crystallization is the spontaneous generation of individually enantioenriched crystals from a nonenantioenriched material. This behavior is responsible for spontaneous resolution and the discovery of molecular chirality by Pasteur. The phenomenon of conglomerate crystallization of chiral organic molecules has been left largely undocumented, with no actively curated list available in the literature. While other crystallographic behaviors can be interrogated by automated searching, conglomerate crystallizations are not identified within the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD) and are therefore not accessible by conventional automated searching. By conducting a manual search of the CSD and literature, a list of over 1800 chiral species capable of conglomerate crystallization was curated by inspection of the racemic synthetic routes described in each publication. The majority of chiral conglomerate crystals are produced and published by synthetic chemists who seldom note and rarely exploit the implications this phenomenon can have on the enantiopurity of their crystalline materials. With their structures revealed, we propose that this list of compounds represents a new chiral pool which is not tied to biological sources of chirality.

Recognition in the Domain of Molecular Chirality: From Noncovalent Interactions to Separation of Enantiomers

It is not a coincidence that both chirality and noncovalent interactions are ubiquitous in nature and synthetic molecular systems. Noncovalent interactivity between chiral molecules underlies enantioselective recognition as a fundamental phenomenon regulating life and human activities. Thus, noncovalent interactions represent the narrative thread of a fascinating story which goes across several disciplines of medical, chemical, physical, biological, and other natural sciences. This review has been conceived with the awareness that a modern attitude toward molecular chirality and its consequences needs to be founded on multidisciplinary approaches to disclose the molecular basis of essential enantioselective phenomena in the domain of chemical, physical, and life sciences. With the primary aim of discussing this topic in an integrated way, a comprehensive pool of rational and systematic multidisciplinary information is provided, which concerns the fundamentals of chirality, a description of noncovalent interactions, and their implications in enantioselective processes occurring in different contexts. A specific focus is devoted to enantioselection in chromatography and electromigration techniques because of their unique feature as "multistep" processes. A second motivation for writing this review is to make a clear statement about the state of the art, the tools we have at our disposal, and what is still missing to fully understand the mechanisms underlying enantioselective recognition.

Chiral Symmetry Breaking of Monoacylated Anhydroerythritols and meso-1,2-Diols through Crystallization-Induced Deracemization

We developed a chiral symmetry breaking method for monoacylated meso diols. The X-ray crystal structure analysis of monoacylated 1,4-anhydroerythritols, meso cyclic diols with a cis configuration, revealed that the O-(p-anisoyl) derivative crystallized as a racemic conglomerate of the P2₁ 2₁ 2₁ crystal system. It was confirmed that the substrate racemized by intramolecular transfer of the acyl group in the presence of a catalytic amount of base. Evaporating the solvent gradually from the solution or Viedma ripening to promote crystallization-induced deracemization efficiently led to enantiomer crystals. These results provide the first successful example of asymmetric expression and amplification by deracemization of sugar derivatives without an external chemical chiral source. Furthermore, we applied this methodology to acyclic meso-1,2-diols. Three O-monoacylated substrates were successfully deracemized to 99 % ee by Viedma ripening. We also developed asymmetric desymmetrization of meso-1,2-diols by combining acylation and crystallization-induced deracemization.

Attrition-Enhanced Asymmetric Transformation of Axially Chiral Nicotinamides by Dynamic Chiral Salt Formation

Atroposelective resolution for axially chiral nicotinamides was achieved by dynamic chiral salt formation with L-DBTA using six types of nicotinamides that could not be optically resolved by the preferential crystallization method. Kinetic studies of their racemization indicated that the chiral conformation was retained for a significant period of time. Two methods of crystallization-induced asymmetric transformation were examined by dynamic diastereomeric salt formation: solvent evaporation from a supersaturated solution, and attrition-enhanced asymmetric transformation. The attrition method was more effective for asymmetric amplification of diastereomeric salts of axially chiral materials. Attrition of equimolar amount of the nicotinamide salts with L-DBTA converged to one diastereomer salts, and the corresponding enantiomers in 87-99 % ee were obtained after the chiral acid was removed. Changing the ratio of two of the nicotinamides with L-DBTA to 1 : 2 inverted the axial chirality.

Asymmetric Synthesis of Indoline from Achiral Phthalimide Involving Crystallization-Induced Deracemization

Asymmetric synthesis was performed by combining the photochemical reaction of an achiral substrate followed by crystallization-induced deracemization. The results indicated that a fused indoline produced by photochemical intramolecular δ-hydrogen abstraction and cyclization of N-(5-chloro-2-methylphenyl)phthalimide crystallized as a racemic conglomerate. Since this substrate has an aminal skeleton, racemization involving a ring-opening and ring-closing equilibrium process occurred under suitable conditions. Efficient racemization was observed in acetone containing a catalytic base, 1,8-diazabicyclo[5.4.0]undec-7-ene (DBU). Crystallization-induced dynamic deracemization by Viedma ripening from racemic indoline was performed with an excellent enantioselectivity of 99 % ee. Furthermore, one-pot asymmetric synthesis of the indoline was achieved by the photochemical reaction of achiral phthalimide followed by continuous attrition-enhanced deracemization converging to 99 % ee of enantiomeric crystals. This is the first example of asymmetric expression and amplification by photochemical hydrogen abstraction and crystallization-induced dynamic deracemization.

Resonance in Chirogenesis and Photochirogenesis: Colloidal Polymers Meet Chiral Optofluidics

Metastable colloids made of crystalline and/or non-crystalline matters render abilities of photonic resonators susceptible to chiral chemical and circularly polarized light sources. By assuming that μm-size colloids and co-colloids consisting of π- and/or σ-conjugated polymers dispersed into an optofluidic medium are artificial models of open-flow, non-equilibrium coacervates, we showcase experimentally resonance effects in chirogenesis and photochirogenesis, revealed by gigantic boosted chiroptical signals as circular dichroism (CD), optical rotation dispersion, circularly polarized luminescence (CPL), and CPL excitation (CPLE) spectral datasets. The resonance in chirogenesis occurs at very specific refractive indices (RIs) of the surrounding medium. The chirogenesis is susceptible to the nature of the optically active optofluidic medium. Moreover, upon an excitation-wavelength-dependent circularly polarized (CP) light source, a fully controlled absolute photochirogenesis, which includes all chiroptical generation, inversion, erase, switching, and short-/long-lived memories, is possible when the colloidal non-photochromic and photochromic polymers are dispersed in an achiral optofluidic medium with a tuned RI. The hand of the CP light source is not a determining factor for the product chirality. These results are associated with my experience concerning amphiphilic polymerizable colloids, in which, four decades ago, allowed proposing a perspective that colloids are connectable to light, polymers, helix, coacervates, and panspermia hypotheses, nuclear physics, biology, radioisotopes, homochirality question, first life, and cosmology.

Supramolecular Diversity of Oxabicyclo[2.2.2]octenes Formed between Substituted 2H-Pyran-2-ones and Vinyl-Moiety-Containing Dienophiles

In Diels–Alder reactions, 2H-pyran-2-ones as dienes can yield a large variety of cycloadducts with up to four contiguous carbon stereogenic centers. Some of the potentially most useful, however difficult to prepare due to their low thermal stability, are the primary CO2-containing oxabicyclo[2.2.2]octenes, which could be formed as eight distinctive isomers (two sets of regioisomers, each of these composed of four different stereoisomers). A high-pressure synthesis of such products was recently described in a few cases where vinyl-moiety-containing dienophiles were used as synthetic equivalents of acetylene. However, structures of the primary products have been so far only rarely investigated in detail. Herein, we present seven novel single-crystal X-ray diffraction structures of such cycloadducts of both stereoisomeric forms, i.e., endo and exo. Additionally, we present a single-crystal structure of a rare case of a cyclohexadiene system stable at room temperature, obtained as a secondary product upon the retro-hetero-Diels–Alder elimination of CO2 under thermal conditions (microwave irradiation), during this elimination the symmetry is increased and out of eight initially possible isomers of the reactant, this number in the product is decreased to four. In oxabicyclo[2.2.2]octene compounds, centrosymmetric hydrogen bonding was found to be the predominant motif and diverse supramolecular patterns were observed due to rich variety of C–H⋯O and C–H⋯π interactions.