Chemistry and dynamics of interaction of nucleosides with pentafluoropyridine

Interaction of pentafluoropyridine with hydroxyl groups of thymidine, uridine, adenosine, and deoxyadenosine at room temperature leads to the formation of aryl ethers of nucleosides with a high yield. Under severe conditions, one more tetrafluoropyridine residue is attached to pyrimidine fragments of T and U, while purine heterocycle in A remains intact. Nucleoside derivatives are formed with a quantitative yield and can be used in situ as intermediates for, as an example, molecular design of arene analogs of nucleic acids. The reaction with thymidine is a successive-parallel process, the limited stage being arylation of the secondary hydroxyl group. The presence of the vicinal hydroxyl group in pentose results in the opposite rate ratio of the formation of primary and secondary tetrafluoropyridyl ethers of adenine and uridine.