The discovery of new strategies that emulate nature!s capacity to rapidly construct architectural complexity continues to be a central focus for research and development in the chemical sciences. Recently, our laboratory disclosed the concept of organocascade catalysis, a new chemical paradigm that combines two modes of catalyst activation (iminium and enamine catalysis) into one mechanism, the...

The combination of small-molecule catalysis and enzyme represents an underexploited area research with huge potential in asymmetric synthetic chemistry due to both compatibility reaction conditions complementary reactivity. Herein, we describe the telescopic synthesis chiral nitro alcohols starting from commercially available benzaldehyde derivatives through one-pot three-step chemoenzymatic ca...

The first enantioselective organocatalytic hydride reduction has been accomplished. The use of iminium catalysis has provided a new organocatalytic strategy for the enantioselective reduction of beta,beta-substituted alpha,beta-unsaturated aldehydes to generate beta-stereogenic aldehydes. The use of imidazolidinone 2 as the asymmetric catalyst has been found to mediate the transfer of hydrogen ...

Artificial enzymes utilizing the genetically encoded non-proteinogenic amino acid p-aminophenylalanine (pAF) as a catalytic residue are able to react with carbonyl compounds through an iminium ion mechanism promote reactions that have no equivalent in nature. Herein, we report vivo biocatalytic cascade is augmented such artificial enzyme-catalysed new-to-nature reaction. The enzyme this study p...