The structure elucidation and total synthesis of β-lipomycin

Here we describe the synthesis of β-lipomycin, a secondary metabolite isolated from the fermentation broth of Corallococcus coralloides. The synthesis relies on the structural assignment made by a statistical method, the so-called profile hidden Markov model. Using this protocol, not only the configuration of the secondary alcohol, but also of the adjacent methyl branch could be deduced. The synthesis therefore not only provides access to this natural product but also confirms the validity of this approach for configurational assignment at methyl branches of modular polyketides.