Enzymatic and chemo-enzymatic approaches provide straightforward access to uridine diphospho sugars irrespective of the relative and absolute configuration of the sugar, its ring size and substitution pattern.

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Solvent-free per-O-acetylation of sugars with stoichiometric acetic anhydride and catalytic iodine proceeds in high yield (90-99%) to give exclusively pyranose products as anomeric mixtures. Without workup, subsequent anomeric substitution employing iodine in the presence of hexamethyldisilane (i.e., TMS-I generated in situ) gives the corresponding glycosyl iodides in 75-95% isolated yield. Alternatively, and without workup, further treatment with dimethyl disulfide or thiol (ethanethiol or thiocresol) gives anomerically pure thioglycosides in more than 75% overall yield.

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Conventional solution-phase synthesis of thioglycosides from glycosyl acetates and thiols in the presence of In(III) triflate as reported for benzyl thioglucoside failed when applied to the synthesis of phenolic and alkyl thioglycosides. But, it was achieved in high efficiency and diastereospecificity with ease by solvent-free grinding in a ball mill. The acetates in turn were also obtained by the homogenization of free sugars with stoichiometric amounts of acetic anhydride and catalytic In(OTf)3 in the mill as neat products. Per-O-benzylated thioglycosides on grinding with an acceptor sugar in the presence of In(OTf)3 yield the corresponding O-glycosides efficiently. The latter in the case of a difficult secondary alcohol was nearly exclusive (>98%) in 1,2-cis-selectivity. In contrast, the conventional methods for this purpose require use of a coreagent such as NIS along with the Lewis acid to help generate the electrophilic species that actually is responsible for the activation of the thioglycoside donor in situ. The distinctly different self-assembling features of the peracetylated octadecyl 1-thio-α- and β-D-galactopyranosides observed by TEM could be rationalized by molecular modeling.

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