Seminar by Prof. Marisa Kozlowski, Chief Editor of Organic Letters, on "Oxygen Driven Fragment Coupling for the Synthesis of Natural Products and Antibacterials"
12 Jan 2024
Seminar Room # 350, second floor annex
Talk Title : "Oxygen Driven Fragment Coupling for the Synthesis of Natural Products and Antibacterials"
Abstract
Nature uses oxidative couplings to construct carbon-carbon, carbon-oxygen,
and carbon-nitrogen bonds with a high degree of efficiency. Surprisingly,
few laboratory equivalents are as selective or as efficient as the
biological versions. The use of parallel microscale screening to discover
selective and efficient catalysts for such processes using oxygen as the
terminal oxidant will be discussed. The unexpected outcomes obtained
highlight the value of interrogating large numbers of rationally selected
variables under the umbrella of general hypothesis. The development of
selective oxidative catalytic processes for phenol coupling, enol
coupling, and alkyl C–H activation will be discussed. Applications in
total synthesis of hypocrellin, honokiol, chaetoglobin, and pyrolaside B
will be presented. Finally, studies on the mechanisms of these
transformations will be described with the goal of understanding the
governing principles and how they might be used to discover further new
transformations.