Categories: Organic Chemistry >> Synthesis >> Reagents

Reagents for Glycoside, Nucleotide, and Peptide Synthesis

Description

This handbook collects together short, informative articles on approximately 250 of the most widely used reagents in the field, into a single volume. Each of the articles, drawn from the e-EROS database, contains a summary of the most pertinent reactions for every reagent, with references to the original literature. This handbook will have a broad appeal and should find a home in every organic chemistry laboratory and library.

• Compiles all the essential reagents for syntheses on and with biomolecules
• Gives key information on protection, bond formation and deprotection
• An essential resource for all synthetic chemists working in drug development and medicinal chemistry
• Makes use of the leading reagent database e-EROS

Editorial Review

The Wiley electronic reagent database, e-EROS (electronic Encyclopedia of Reagents for Organic Synthesis), contains 3500 reagents and over 48000 reactions. There are so far four books in which application-specific reagents are summarized. The present work, "Reagents for Glycoside, Nucleotide, and Peptide Synthesis", has now been subjected to a most exacting appraisal.

Glycosides, nucleotides and peptides are important compounds that must be synthesized for certain research applications. Practitioners in the research fields of chemical biology and medicinal chemistry are especially interested in having efficient syntheses for these substances and similar compounds (mimetics). Such syntheses can be approached with a relatively rich palette of reagents, which is constantly being enlarged. Thus, a number of derivatives are available for reagents such as dicyclohexylcarbodiimide (DCC), which enables the preparation of amides or esters, to the extent that having a dozen such alternatives to choose from makes it difficult to select the most suitable reagent for a particular reaction.

"Reagents for Glycoside, Nucleotide, and Peptide Synthesis" contains 250 monographs covering reagents selected from the offerings in e-EROS. A summary at the beginning of each monograph covers the applications (using keywords), alternative names, physical properties, purification and handling, including safety precautions. Following this, one finds a detailed description that includes important reactions with current literature citations. The additional explanations and representative reactions fill an average of 3-4 pages per reagent, depending on the relative number of different applications for the particular reagent. Updated entries for several of the reagents appear following the original monograph, which speaks for the timeliness of the book. The monographs also contain cross-references to related reagents, which can facilitate the quest for alternatives just as will a search through the Subject Index by using general reaction type names such as “acylations”, “dehydrations” or “halogenations”.

The quality of the monographs is uniformly high, despite their having been authored by many different individuals from academia and industry. An appropriate number of tips on handling and interesting sample reactions with literature citations are provided. Surprisingly, this book is also an excellent value for the money, with a price that will enable it to appear not only as a high caliber reference work in chemistry-oriented libraries, but also readily to hand in the bookshelves of research groups from the earlier mentioned scientific disciplines.