title: Do Anti-Bredt Natural Products Exist? Olefin Strain Energy as a Predictor of Isolability.
abstract: Bredt's rule holds a special place in the realm of physical organic chemistry, but its application to natural products chemistry—the field in which the rule was originally formulated—is not well defined. Herein, the use of olefin strain (OS) energy as a readily calculated predictor of the stability of natural products containing a bridgehead alkene is introduced. Schleyer first used OS energies to classify parent bridgehead alkenes into "isolable", "observable", and "unstable" classes. OS calculations on natural products, using contemporary forcefield methods, unequivocally predict all structurally verified bridgehead alkene natural products to be "isolable". Thus, when one assigns the structure of a putative bridgehead alkene natural product, an OS in the "observable" or "unstable" ranges is a red flag for error.
authors.affiliation: School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, 4072, Queensland (Australia) http://www.scmb.uq.edu.au/homepages/williams/index.html. e.krenske@uq.edu.au.
authors.forename: Elizabeth H
authors.initials: EH
authors.lastname: Krenske
authors.affiliation: School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, 4072, Queensland (Australia) http://www.scmb.uq.edu.au/homepages/williams/index.html. c.williams3@uq.edu.au.
authors.forename: Craig M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Williams
mesh_terms: D000475:Alkenes / Q000737:chemistry*; D001688:Biological Products / Q000737:chemistry*; D013816:Thermodynamics; D014961:X-Ray Diffraction
chemical_list: D000475:Alkenes; D001688:Biological Products
keywords: Bredt’s rule; anti-Bredt; bridgehead olefins; natural products; strained molecules