Group-Assisted Purification Chemistry for Asymmetric Mannich-type Reaction of Chiral N-Phosphonyl Imines with Azlactones Leading to Syntheses of α-Quaternary α,ß-Diamino Acid Derivatives †.

An asymmetric Mannich-type reaction between chiral N-phosphonyl imines and azlactones [oxazol-5(4H)-ones] has been established under convenient conditions at room temperature. The reaction was performed without using any bases, additives, or catalysts to achieve up to excellent chemical yields and diastereoselectivity for 32 examples. The α-quaternary syn-α,ß-diamino acid products were purified simply by washing the crude mixtures with cosolvents, following the group-assisted purification chemistry/technology, without involving traditional chromatography or recrystallization methods. The auxiliary can be readily removed and recycled for reuse. The absolute configuration was unambiguously assigned by X-ray structural analysis.

Identification of cancer prognosis-associated functional modules using differential co-expression networks.

The rapid accumulation of cancer-related data owing to high-throughput technologies has provided unprecedented choices to understand the progression of cancer and discover functional networks in multiple cancers. Establishment of co-expression networks will help us to discover the systemic properties of carcinogenesis features and regulatory mechanisms of multiple cancers. Here, we proposed a computational workflow to identify differentially co-expressed gene modules across 8 cancer types by using combined gene differential expression analysis methods and a higher-order generalized singular value decomposition. Four co-expression modules were identified; and oncogenes and tumor suppressors were significantly enriched in these modules. Functional enrichment analysis demonstrated the significantly enriched pathways in these modules, including ECM-receptor interaction, focal adhesion and PI3K-Akt signaling pathway. The top-ranked miRNAs (mir-199, mir-29, mir-200) and transcription factors (FOXO4, E2A, NFAT, and MAZ) were identified, which play an important role in deregulating cellular energetics; and regulating angiogenesis and cancer immune system. The clinical significance of the co-expressed gene clusters was assessed by evaluating their predictability of cancer patients' survival. The predictive power of different clusters and subclusters was demonstrated. Our results will be valuable in cancer-related gene function annotation and for the evaluation of cancer patients' prognosis.