Bicyclic ring systems bearing two quaternary carbon centres be found in a wide range of natural products with significant biological activities. The development of efficient reactions for the one-pot construction of this structure represents a significant challenge to synthetic chemistry.  Professor Zhen Yang’s group at PKU Shenzhen recently accomplished an efficient [3+2] cycloaddition reaction between an enal and an alleno rhodium species, which was generated in situ from the corresponding enynol via a retro metal-propargylation reaction, to give [3.3.0] and [3.4.0] bicyclic systems bearing two quaternary atoms at their bridgehead positions. The developed chemistry has been successfully applied to the asymmetric total synthesis of natural product (−)-lingzhiol for the first time in 17 steps. The mechanism was also investigated by computational chemistry which was done through the cooperation with Professor Yu Lan’s group at Chongqing University. This work has been published in Nature Communications (2014, 5:5707, doi:10.1038/ncomms6707) with doctoral candidate Ms. Rong Long and Mr. Jun Huang as the co-first authors.
Link：http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/141208/ncomms6707/full/ncomms6707.html）