Soai reaction

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The Soai reaction is an alkylation reaction of pyrimidine-5-carbaldehyde with diisopropylzinc . The resulting product - a pyrimidyl alcohol - acts as an autocatalyst: Using small amounts of the same catalyst with a low enantiomeric excess ( ee ) results in a product with a high ee value. Starting with a pyrimidyl alcohol, with an extremely low ee of approx. 0.00005%, a product with> 99.5% ee is obtained in three autocatalysis cycles , an increase by a factor of approx. 630,000.

Soai reaction with asymmetric autocatalysis and an increase in the ee

The Japanese chemist Kensō Soai (* 1950) discovered this reaction in 1995.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. Chirality and Life: A Short Introduction to the Early Phases of Chemical Evolution , pp. 16-17.
  2. Takanori Shibata, Hiroshi Morioka, Tadakatsu Hayase, Kaori Choji, Kenso Soai: Highly Enantioselective Catalytic Asymmetric Automultiplication of Chiral Pyrimidyl Alcohol . In: Journal of the American Chemical Society . 118, 1996, p. 471. doi : 10.1021 / ja953066g .

Further literature