Duilio Arigoni

The research interest in his group has focused on the structure and biosynthesis of natural products as well as on mechanistic studies of enzyme-catalyzed processes with a strong emphasis on sterochemical details. In the area of natural products the choice of a specific topic was dictated by the biological importance of the compounds and/or by the evaluation of structural leads betraying the operation of non conventional biogenetic pathways; the host-specific toxins from Helminthosporium sacchari, Cochliobolus victoriae and Periconia circinata (investigated in cooperation with V. Macko) provide examples for the first group, while investigations on the biosynthesis of the macrocyclic tetraethers from Archebacteria and of the complex isoprenoid components of Ginkgo biloba are representative for the second motivation. A prominent aspect of the mechanistic studies of enzymic reactions was the development of a methodology for the preparation and detection of chiral methyl groups, a goal simultaneously and independently achieved by Profs. Cornforth and Eggerer. The non-trivial problem of differentiating between homotopic groups of compounds with local C3 symmetry has been extended to the preparation of a chiral form of pivalic acid and three different methodologies have been elaborated for analyzing the sense of chirality of such probes.