MIDA boronates react via two different mechanisms

(Phys.org)—In natural product and pharmaceutical chemistry, one goal is to find a modular reaction to put together complex products, similar to how amino acids combine to form a peptide. Ideally, this modular reaction could couple key building blocks used for many of these processes. N-methylimidodiacetic acid boronic esters, or MIDA boronates, have become the platform of choice for many automated platform small-molecule coupling reactions.