The highly selective oxidation of just one carbon–hydrogen bond out of almost 50 in a late-stage precursor can be used to construct the macrocyclic core on which the erythromycin antibiotics are based, and demonstrates the potential of such C–H activation approaches for natural product synthesis.
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Davies, H. Expanding the art of synthesis. Nature Chem 1, 519–520 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.381
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.381
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