ABSTRACT
Herein, we report the nor-AZADO-catalyzed exhaustive aerobic oxidations of 1,2-diols to α-keto acids. Combining oxidation with transamination using dl-2-phenylglycine led to the synthesis of free α-amino acids (AAs) in one pot. This method enables the rapid and flexible preparation of a variety of valuable unnatural AAs, such as fluorescent AAs, photoactivatable AAs, and other functional AAs for bioorthogonal reactions.
Subject(s)
Alcohols/chemistry , Amino Acids/chemistry , Adamantane/analogs & derivatives , Adamantane/chemistry , Catalysis , Cyclic N-Oxides/chemistry , Keto Acids/chemistry , Oxidation-ReductionABSTRACT
The chemoselective oxidation of α-hydroxy acids to α-keto acids catalyzed by 2-azaadamantane N-oxyl (AZADO), a nitroxyl radical catalyst, is described. Although α-keto acids are labile and can easily release CO2 under oxidation conditions, the use of molecular oxygen as a cooxidant enables the desired chemoselective oxidation.
ABSTRACT
Chemoselective catalytic oxidation from 1,2-diols to α-hydroxy acids in a cat. TEMPO/cat. NaOCl/NaClO2 system has been achieved. The use of a two-phase condition consisting of hydrophobic toluene and water suppresses the concomitant oxidative cleavage. A study of the mechanism suggests that the observed selectivity is derived from the precise solubility control of diols and hydroxy acids as well as the active species of TEMPO. Although the oxoammonium species TEMPO(+)Cl(-) is hydrophilic, the active species dissolves into the organic layer by the formation of the charge-transfer (CT) complex TEMPO-ClO2 under the reaction conditions.
Subject(s)
Alcohols/chemistry , Cyclic N-Oxides/chemistry , Hydroxy Acids/chemistry , Catalysis , Oxidation-ReductionABSTRACT
Signature-tagged mutagenesis was applied to Mesorhizobium loti, a nitrogen-fixing root-nodule symbiont of the leguminous plant Lotus japonicus. We arranged 1,887 non-redundant mutant strains of M. loti into 75 sets, each consisting of 24 to 26 strains with a different tag in each strain. These sets were each inoculated en masse onto L. japonicus plants. Comparative analysis of total DNA extracted from inoculants and resulting nodules based on quantitative PCR led to the selection of 69 strains as being reduced in relative abundance during nodulation. Plant assays conducted with individual strains confirmed that 3 were defective in nodulation (Nod(-)) and that 10 were Nod(+) but defective in nitrogen fixation (Fix(-)); in each case, the symbiosis deficiency could be attributed to the transposon insertion carried by that strain. Although the remaining 56 strains were Fix(+), 33 of them showed significantly reduced competitiveness during nodulation. Among the mutants we identified are known genes that are diverse in predicted function as well as some genes of unknown function, which demonstrates the validity of this screening procedure for functional genomics in rhizobia.
