Current Organic Chemistry - Volume 9, Issue 4, 2005

The fact that many enzymes have broad substrate specificity has been a property of fundamental importance for the widespread applications of enzymes in synthetic chemistry. Many enzymes can, in addition, catalyze completely different reactions compared to their natural ones. The possibility of using molecular biology techniques to control such catalytic plasticity of enzymes in order to establish completely new reac Read More

The present review intends to give an overview on the synthetic methods applied for the preparation of resorcarenes and all the conformation implications due to the flexibility of the target tetramers. The flexible resorcarenes can be rigidified by intramolecular bridging of adjacent oxygens with bifunctional reagents, to give cavitands. These compounds, which feature rigid bowl shaped cavities of different size and dimension Read More

Hydrazinoalcohols are versatile di- or trifunctional compounds with wide-ranging possibilities for application in organic synthesis. Numerous methods have been devised for the preparation of this family of compounds in recent decades. This review discusses the main pathways for the synthesis of hydrazinoalcohol derivatives, including epoxide ring-openings and nucleophilic substitutions by hydrazines, addition reaction Read More

The 2,3-dihydro-1,4-benzodioxin structure is present in compounds having some interesting biological properties. The first access to this structure, performed from 2-alkyl-1,4-benzodioxin or benzene-1,2-diol via stoechiometric cyclization, generally gave mixtures of products. Recently, the organometallic-catalyzed synthesis of this structure was performed using mercuric oxide, or more interesting, palladium as the catalyst. Read More

This review attempts to systematize the myriad aspects of natural radioprotective agents assembled from a comprehensive survey. These aspects include definition, historical background, mechanism of action, components of biological system damaged by radiation, areas of application, classification, sources, activity profiles of radioprotective agents belonging to various classes exerting both prophylactic / therapeutic eff Read More