Petasis Borono-Mannich reaction and allylation of carbonyl compounds via transient allyl boronates generated by palladium-catalyzed substitution of allyl alcohols. an efficient one-pot route to stereodefined alpha-amino acids and homoallyl alcohols.

An efficient one-pot procedure was designed by integration of the pincer-complex-catalyzed borylation of allyl alcohols in the Petasis borono-Mannich reaction and in allylation of aldehydes and ketones. These procedures are suitable for one-pot synthesis of alpha-amino acids and homoallyl alcohols from easily available allyl alcohol, amine, aldehyde, or ketone substrates. In the presented transformations, the active allylating agents are in situ generated allyl boronic acid derivatives. These transient intermediates are proved to be reasonably acid-, base-, alcohol-, water-, and air-stable species, which allows a high level of compatibility with the reaction conditions of the allylation of various aldehyde/ketone and imine electrophiles. The boronate source of the reaction is diboronic acid or in situ hydrolyzed diboronate ester ensuring that the waste product of the reaction is nontoxic boric acid. The regio- and stereoselectivity of the reaction is excellent, as almost all products form as single regio- and stereoisomers. The described procedure is suitable to create quaternary carbon centers in branched allylic products without formation of the corresponding linear allylic isomers. Furthermore, products comprising three stereocenters were formed as single products without formation of other diastereomers. Because of the highly disciplined consecutive processes, up to four-step, four-component transformations could be performed selectively as a one-pot sequence. For example, stereodefined pyroglutamic acid could be prepared from a simple allyl alcohol, a commercially available amine, and glyoxylic acid in a one-step procedure. The presented method also grants an easy access to stereodefined 1,7-dienes that are useful substrates for Grubbs ring-closing metathesis.