The excision of hydrogen from an aliphatic carbon chain to produce an isolated olefin (desaturation) without over-oxidation is one of the most impressive and powerful biosynthetic transformations for which there are no simple and mild laboratory substitutes. The versatility of olefins and the range of reactions they undergo is unsurpassed in functional group space. Thus, the conversion of a relatively inert aliphatic system to its unsaturated counterpart can open new possibilities in retrosynthesis. In this article, the invention of a directing group to achieve such a transformation under mild, operationally simple, metal-free conditions is outlined. This “portable desaturase” (TzoCl) is a bench-stable, commercial entity (Aldrich, cat # L510092) that is facile to install on alcohol and amine functionalities to ultimately effect remote desaturation, while leaving behind a synthetically useful tosyl group.

Short and sweet: A simple and practical route to the unusual tricyclic ring system found in the biologically active diterpene vinigrol is described. A remarkable proximity‐induced intramolecular cycloaddition and mild Grob fragmentation allow rapid construction of the core ring system in less than 10 steps and with a minimal reliance on protecting groups.

A scalable method for the preparation of 4,5-disubstituted thiazoles and imidazoles as distinct regioisomeric products using a modular flow microreactor has been devised. The process makes use of microfluidic reaction chips and packed immobilized-reagent columns to effect bifurcation of the reaction pathway.

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β-Lactam antibiotics, one of the most important class of human therapeutics, act via the inhibition of penicillin-binding proteins (PBPs). The unparalleled success in their development has inspired efforts to develop them as inhibitors of other targets. Bacterial type I signal peptidase is evolutionarily related to the PBPs, but the stereochemistry of its substrates and its catalytic mechanism suggest that β-lactams with the 5 stereochemistry, as opposed to the 5 stereochemistry of the traditional β-lactams, would be required for inhibition. We report the synthesis and evaluation of a variety of 5 penem derivatives and identify several with promising activity against both a Gram-positive and a Gram-negative bacterial pathogen. To our knowledge these are the first 5-lactams to possess significant antibacterial activity and the first β-lactams imparted with antibacterial activity via optimization of the inhibition of a target other than a PBP. Along with the privileged status of their scaffold and the promise of bacterial signal peptidase I (SPase) as a target, this activity makes these compounds promising leads for development as novel therapeutics.