Despite deromantizing total synthesis I do like organic chemistry and do feel aesthetic pleasure from synthetic schemes and mechanisms [note for my future employer, I do enjoy the bench work, too!]. Also, since high school and undergrad years I still have weak spot for org-chem puzzles. So Below are some little nuggets (subjective, of course) from the recent OC papers that I found interesting.
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From Popov et al (Somfai lab) (ACIE):
- Try to figure out the mechanism
- Try to explain the difference in chemoselectivity (and what’s going on with that Ts group by the way?).
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From Hamasaki et al (Kochi lab) (JACS)
Can you guess the mechanism for this one?
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Dream big!
All multi-ton processes start from the small scale, check this cute Kugelrohr apparatus setup by Thiyagarajan et al. for processing of biomass-derived furans (The white stuff in the middle is a zeolite catalyst; ACIE)
TLP 