Advances in Asymmetric Autocatalysis and Related Topics

Advances in Asymmetric Autocatalysis provides various viewpoints on important developments in asymmetric autocatalysis that have occurred in the past few years, as well as brand new information on the field. Asymmetric autocatalysis is a chemical reaction which leads from achiral starting materials to chiral product and in which the product accelerates its own formation reaction (conventional catalysis) as well as promotes the prevalence of its own chiral configuration (asymmetric induction). The combination of these two effects in the same reaction was unprecedented before 1995, when it was first described by Kenso SOAI from the Tokyo University of Science. Since then, several new combinations of this effect have been found, most intriguingly the possibility of absolute asymmetric synthesis, which is the spontaneous formation of the excess of one of the enantiomers of the product, and the dream of organic chemists since more than a century. In Advances in Asymmetric Autocatalysis, expert-contributed chapters describe the most exciting recent developments in the field of the Soai reaction and in related topics, ranging from mechanistic studies, through theoretical research, to very practical problems in chiral syntheses and products. Features contributions from global experts, including several chapters from Kenso Soai and colleaguesFocuses on recent developments in the field of asymmetric autocatalysis as well as newly reported findingsExplores what light the Soai reaction and developments around it sheds on homochirality in certain biomolecules