Metal catalysis in transformations of organic compounds

PROJECT SUMMARY Organic molecules play an important role in research areas relevant to human health, including biology, medicine, and drug development. One of the main goals of synthetic organic chemistry is to facilitate discovery in these fields by providing access to organic molecules of increasing complexity and variety, and by expanding our ability to efficiently manipulate their structure and other properties. As a result, the development of new organic transformations is a critically important goal of organic chemistry with implications to other research areas relevant to human health. We plan to develop new catalytic transformations for alkene synthesis by exploring the reactivity of organoboron compounds in the presence of transition-metal catalysts. The proposed transformations will also directly address enduring challenges in organic synthesis, such as cross- nucleophile coupling, stereocontrol in synthesis of highly substituted alkenes, two-carbon homologation, and C-C bond activation. Once successfully developed, these transformations will greatly facilitate access to complex alkenes from a wide range of common precursors. Considering the importance of alkenes as reactive intermediate in organic chemistry, this will have significant impact on the synthesis of biologically relevant compounds.