Current Organic Chemistry - Volume 11, Issue 4, 2007

The current issue is Part I of the first thematic issue of Current Organic Chemistry devoted to Bioorganic Chemistry, a field the importance of which is nowadays self-evident. It consists of four extensive review articles dealing with the chemistry and enzymology of steroids, nucleosides and oligonucleotides. I believe that these articles are of considerable general interest and that they at the same time constitute a compilatio Read More

A survey of the chemo-enzymatic methodology for the preparation of nucleosides of biological importance is presented. The emphasis is made on the enzymatic transglycosylation and glycosylation employing the nucleoside phosphorylases and N-deoxyribosyltransferases. Application of the whole cells as biocatalysts as well as purified enzymes from wild-type bacteria and recombinant enzymes is considered.

The review summarizes structural features, biological activity and synthetic methods of disaccharide nucleosides. In the first part the structures of natural disaccharide nucleosides are presented. The consequent part deals with general methods of synthesis of these compounds - formation of new N-and O-glycosidic bonds. Recent achievements in the preparation of disaccharide nucleosides from natural nucleosides are discus Read More

A productive approach for the incorporation of metal centers into nucleic acids providing new materials must be versatile, modular and synthetically simple. Metal complex-containing DNA-oligomers are predominantly constructed via three major pathways: a) the synthesis of a chelator-containing oligonucleotide followed by metal complexation, b) the synthesis of an end-functionalized oligonucleotide to which a Read More

Recent work is reviewed concerning the synthesis of estrone or estradiol homologues, of interest in diagnostics, drug discovery research etc. The survey is limited to reactions where a carbon atom or a carbon chain becomes directly attached to the steroid ring system. Also conversions of non-estranoid starting materials to substituted estrone/estradiol derivatives are discussed. The organization of the review follows steroid Read More