Olefinmetathesis in carotenoid synthesis

Abstract

Olefin metathesis is a powerful and widely applicable synthetic method for carbon–carbon double bond formation. However, its application to the synthesis of conjugating polyene chains has been very limited because of possible undesired side reactions. We attempted to apply this method to the synthesis of symmetrical carotenoids. In this paper, the syntheses of violaxanthin and mimulaxanthin are described using the olefin metathesis protocol.