We characterize the structural and electronic changes during the photoinduced enol-keto tautomerization of 2-(2'-hydroxyphenyl)-benzothiazole (HBT) in a nonpolar solvent (tetrachloroethene). We quantify the redistribution of electronic charge and intramolecular proton translocation in real time by combining UV-pump/IR-probe spectroscopy and quantum chemical modeling. We find that the photophysi...

Porous materials such as covalent organic frameworks (COFs) are good candidates for molecular sieves due to the chemical diversity of their building blocks, which allows fine-tuning of their chemical and physical properties by design. Tailored synthesis of inherently functional building blocks can generate framework materials with chemoresponsivity, leading to controllable functionalities such ...

In his book The Double Helix, James Watson describes an early proposal for DNA structure in which equal bases pair with each other. He writes: ‘‘My scheme was torn to shreds the following noon. Against me was the awkward chemical fact that I had chosen the wrong tautomeric forms for guanine and thymine.’’ This fact was pointed out to him by the American crystallographer Jerry Donahue who ‘‘ . ....

Stereoselective synthesis of a cyclopentane nucleus by convergent annulation constitutes a significant challenge for synthetic chemists. Although a number of biologically relevant cyclopentane natural products are known, more often than not, the cyclopentane core is assembled in a stepwise manner because of the lack of efficient annulation strategies. Here we report the rhodium-catalysed reacti...

In a combined study on the photophysics of 2-(2'-hydroxyphenyl)-benzothiazole (HBT) in polar acetonitrile utilizing ultrafast infrared spectroscopy and quantum chemical calculations, we show that a branching of reaction pathways occurs on femtosecond time scales. Apart from the excited-state intramolecular hydrogen transfer (ESIHT) converting electronically excited enol tautomer into the keto t...

From quantum mechanics calculations we confirm that the naturally occurring enol lancifodilactone G is stable over the keto form (by 2.6 kcal/mol in water), the only known stable aliphatic enol (devoid of conjugated or bulky aromatics and lacking a 1,3-diketone structural motif known to stabilize enols). We determine architectural elements responsible for the enol stabilization and find a mecha...

The enol of a-cyano-a-phenylacetic acid was observed as a short-lived transient species formed upon flash photolytic generation of phenylcyanoketene by a photo-Wolff reaction of a-cyano-a-diazoacetophenone followed by hydration of the ketene. Rates of ketonization of the enol were measured in dilute hydrochloric acid solutions and acetic acid, biphosphate ion, tris(hydroxymethyl)methylamine, an...

γ-Valerolactone (GVL) is readily accessible by catalytic hydrogenation of carbohydrate-derived levulinic acid (LA) and an attractive biobased chemical with a wide range applications in both the (e.g., as biomass-derived solvent) transportation fuel sector. In this study, we used isotopic labeling experiments to provide insights into pathways involved conversion LA GVL under different reaction c...

keto-enol tautomerism was investigated for ionized pyruvic acid using the dft(b3lyp) method and the larger basis sets [6-31++g(d,p), 6-311++g(3df, 3pd) and aug-cc-pvdz]. change of the tautomeric preference was observed when going from the neutral to ionized tautomeric mixture. ionization favors the enolization process (ketoenol) of pyruvic acid, whereas the ketonization (ketoenol) is preferred ...