[Synthesis of acyclic 1,3-polyols and its application to structural study of natural products]

A 1,3-polyhydroxylated chain is often found on the backbone of biologically important natural products. The acyclic nature and the regular array of many hydroxyl groups are main obstacles to structural and synthetic studies, and many efforts have been made to this end. We have developed a new general synthetic method of 1,3-polyols based on the coupling of a chiral dithiane, a four-carbon unit, and an epoxide, followed by 1,3-diastereoselective reduction. We applied the method to the synthesis of polymethoxy-1-alkenes isolated from blue-green algae to establish their absolute stereochemistry. Moreover, a general procedure for assigning the absolute stereochemistry of acyclic 1,3-polyols by the difference circular dichroism (CD) method have been established. Combination of the method and a reiterative degradation enables one to determine the absolute configuration of 1,3-polyols, even if the relative stereochemistry is unknown.