Author
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Ludley, Frank |
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Ralph, John |
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Submitted to: Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal Publication Acceptance Date: 8/21/1996 Publication Date: N/A Citation: N/A Interpretive Summary: Lignin, the second most abundant land-based natural polymer, occurs in all plants. In the plant, the polymer is built from small natural compounds, coniferyl and sinapyl alcohols. These compounds are required by scientists to feed to plants, sometimes with strategic labels or tags to allow the compound to be tracked through the plant; they are also used for studying the formation of lignin and the mechanisms by which it is incorporated int the plant's structure. These lignin building blocks can be made by a variety of methods, many of which we have developed. There are some difficulties in all of the preparations which produce, in addition to the desired compounds, unwanted byproducts. The new procedure is based on the recent commercial availability of two compounds, coniferaldehyde and sinapyl aldehyde. Here we describe a rather simple and selective method that takes these aldehyde compounds to the lignin building blocks. It produces the required lignin precursors very cleanly and without significant byproducts. The simplicity and the use of safe and stable compounds for the reaction make it useful not only to us but other researchers who, for various reasons, require lignin building blocks but may not have the chemistry skills demanded by previously published methods. Technical Abstract: Coniferyl and sinapyl alcohols were prepared quickly and in high yields using selective 1,2-reduction of the corresponding aldehydes with sodium borohydride in ethyl acetate. |
