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Updated: Feb 10, 2026

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Published on: February 11, 2016
Photochemical reductive homologation of hydrogen cyanide using sulfite and ferrocyanide
Jianfeng Xu1, Dougal J Ritson, Sukrit Ranjan
1MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Francis Crick Avenue, Cambridge Biomedical Campus, Cambridge, CB2 0QH, UK. johns@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk.
Abstract:
Photoredox cycling during UV irradiation of ferrocyanide ([FeII(CN)6]4-) in the presence of stoichiometric sulfite (SO32-) is shown to be an extremely effective way to drive the reductive homologation of hydrogen cyanide (HCN) to simple sugars and precursors of hydroxy acids and amino acids.
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