TETRALINS: STRUCTURESHIELDING RELATIONSHIPSThe conformational and spectroscopic analysis of the tetralin skeleton is of relevance for many natural products, e.g. for several sesquiterpenoids, lignan or chroman derivatives. Further, tetralins show a wide spectrum of biological activity?3 which only can be understood on the basis of a detailed knowledge of their molecular structure. The presence of a flexible non-chair cyclohexene ring in these compounds (Scheme 1) provides a particular challenge for the use of 13C NMR shifts for configurational and conformational assignments.Crystallographic structure determinations have been carried out for several tetralin derivative^;^ in view of the vicinal halogen substituents present in these compounds, however, it is difficult to infer the conformation of the basic skeleton from these measurements. Molecular mechanics calculations using the MM2 force field' clearly demonstrate the close resemblance of the twist half-chair conformation found in tetralins and the cyclohexene geometry (Table l), which was recognized in several earlier investigation^.^'^ Whereas substituents in the 2/3-position will be predominantly pseudoequatoria16b as in cyclohexene (see Table 1, footnote d), there is a major difference from cyclohexene for substituents at C-1/4 in tetralins, which are destabilized in the pseudoequatorial position by 'A1,'' interaction with the periplanar hydrogen at C-8 of the aromatic ring. Based on this and on detailed IR and NMR studies, Hanaya and other Japanese worked concluded that 1-substituents, in particular hydroxyl groups, usually dominate in a pseudoaxial position. Four lines of evidence, however, point to an almost equal population of eq and ax conformers in 1- ' Electron diffraction results: