Intramolecular dynamics of small molecules - empirical evaluation of adiabatic and nonadiabatic corrections

1996 ◽  
Vol 100 (11) ◽  
pp. 1906-1910 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. F. Ogilvie
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Newhouse ◽  
Daria E. Kim ◽  
Joshua E. Zweig

The diverse molecular architectures of terpene natural products are assembled by exquisite enzyme-catalyzed reactions. Successful recapitulation of these transformations using chemical synthesis is hard to predict from first principles and therefore challenging to execute. A means of evaluating the feasibility of such chemical reactions would greatly enable the development of concise syntheses of complex small molecules. Herein, we report the computational analysis of the energetic favorability of a key bio-inspired transformation, which we use to inform our synthetic strategy. This approach was applied to synthesize two constituents of the historically challenging indole diterpenoid class, resulting in a concise route to (–)-paspaline A in 9 steps from commercially available materials and the first pathway to and structural confirmation of emindole PB in 13 steps. This work highlights how traditional retrosynthetic design can be augmented with quantum chemical calculations to reveal energetically feasible synthetic disconnections, minimizing time-consuming and expensive empirical evaluation.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Newhouse ◽  
Daria E. Kim ◽  
Joshua E. Zweig

The diverse molecular architectures of terpene natural products are assembled by exquisite enzyme-catalyzed reactions. Successful recapitulation of these transformations using chemical synthesis is hard to predict from first principles and therefore challenging to execute. A means of evaluating the feasibility of such chemical reactions would greatly enable the development of concise syntheses of complex small molecules. Herein, we report the computational analysis of the energetic favorability of a key bio-inspired transformation, which we use to inform our synthetic strategy. This approach was applied to synthesize two constituents of the historically challenging indole diterpenoid class, resulting in a concise route to (–)-paspaline A in 9 steps from commercially available materials and the first pathway to and structural confirmation of emindole PB in 13 steps. This work highlights how traditional retrosynthetic design can be augmented with quantum chemical calculations to reveal energetically feasible synthetic disconnections, minimizing time-consuming and expensive empirical evaluation.


Author(s):  
Ji-da Dai ◽  
M. Joseph Costello ◽  
Lawrence I. Gilbert

Insect molting and metamorphosis are elicited by a class of polyhydroxylated steroids, ecdysteroids, that originate in the prothoracic glands (PGs). Prothoracicotropic hormone stimulation of steroidogenesis by the PGs at the cellular level involves both calcium and cAMP. Cell-to-cell communication mediated by gap junctions may play a key role in regulating signal transduction by controlling the transmission of small molecules and ions between adjacent cells. This is the first report of gap junctions in the PGs, the evidence obtained by means of SEM, thin sections and freeze-fracture replicas.


Author(s):  
H.B. Pollard ◽  
C.E. Creutz ◽  
C.J. Pazoles ◽  
J.H. Scott

Exocytosis is a general concept describing secretion of enzymes, hormones and transmitters that are otherwise sequestered in intracellular granules. Chemical evidence for this concept was first gathered from studies on chromaffin cells in perfused adrenal glands, in which it was found that granule contents, including both large protein and small molecules such as adrenaline and ATP, were released together while the granule membrane was retained in the cell. A number of exhaustive reviews of this early work have been published and are summarized in Reference 1. The critical experiments demonstrating the importance of extracellular calcium for exocytosis per se were also first performed in this system (2,3), further indicating the substantial service given by chromaffin cells to those interested in secretory phenomena over the years.


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