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Macıas et al.
2048 J. Agric. Food Chem., Vol. 58, No. 3, 2010
of starting material). Sodium borohydride (2 mol equiv) was
added, and the solution was vigorously stirred. A solution of the
nitrophenoxyacetate in 1,4-dioxane (0.5 g/mL) was added drop-
wise to this stirred suspension. The progress of the reaction was
monitored by TLC. Once the reaction was complete, the suspen-
sion was vacuum filtered through Celite to remove the catalyst,
and the filtrate was treated with 10% HCl until pH = 2 was
reached. This solution was further extracted with ethyl acetate
(ꢀ3). The organic layers were combined and dried over anhy-
drous sodium sulfate, and the solvent was distilled under reduced
pressure. The resulting residue was purified by column chroma-
tography (CC; SiO2, ethyl acetate/hexane, increasing polarity) to
give the corresponding benzoxazinone (Figure 2).
General Procedure for Esterification. The appropriate D-
DIBOA halo derivative (100 mg) was dissolved in dry pyridine
(25 mL), and 1.2 mol equiv of the appropriate acyl chloride
(commercial) was added dropwise at 0 °C (ice bath) under a dry
argon atmosphere. The reaction mixture was allowed to warmp to
room temperature; 12 h later, EtOAc (25 mL) was added, and the
mixture was transferred to an extraction funnel and washed with
0.1 N HCl (3 ꢀ 50 mL) and 0.1 N NaHSO4 (3 ꢀ 50 mL). The
organic phases were further combined and dried over anhydrous
magnesium sulfate. The solvent was removed (rotatory evapora-
tor), and the residue was chromatographed (CC; SiO2, EtOAc/
hexane, 1:10) to give the benzoxazinone ester derivatives (Figure 3).
Calculation of IC50 and LogP. The phytotoxicity data were
fitted to a sigmoidal dose-response model (constant slope) by
employing the GraphPad Prism v.4.00 software package
(GraphPad Software Inc.). cLogP values were estimated using
the OSIRIS property explorer (ChemExper Inc.). This software
uses the Chou and Jurs algorithm, which is based on computed
atom contributions (16).
Figure 1. Structures of 4-hydroxy-(2H)-1,4-benzoxazin-3(4H)-one (D-
DIBOA) and 4-acetoxy-(2H)-1,4-benzoxazin-3(4H)-one (ABOA).
bioactivity evaluation of models including more than one kind of
structural modification were planned. The main objective of this
research was to achieve the maximum phytotoxic effects in
different standard target species. As a first approach, the bioac-
tivity of these novel leads on common crops selected as standard
target species is reported herein.
Fifteen derivatives were synthesized, and these included aro-
matic ring modifications plus the addition of side chains in
positions C-2 and N-4 (Tables 1 and 2). These compounds were
evaluated in terms of the phytotoxicity results, selectivity, and
structure-activity relationships, and the results are summarized
below.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
General Experimental Procedures. The purities of the com-
1
pounds to be tested were determined by H NMR and HPLC
analyses and were found to be >98%. 1H and 13C NMR spectra
were recorded using CDCl3 as solvent on a Varian INOVA
spectrometer at 399.99 and 100.577 MHz, respectively. The
resonance of residual chloroform was set to δ 7.25. The solvent
peak for 13C was set to δ 77.00 (chloroform), and this was used as
the internal reference. UV-vis spectra were obtained using a
Varian Cary 50 BIO spectrophotometer with chloroform as the
solvent. Mass spectra (EIMS) were recorded using a Voyager
Thermoquest spectrometer. FTIR spectra were obtained on a
Perkin-Elmer Spectrum BX FTIR system. Frequency values are
Molecular Modeling and QSAR Calculations. Three-dimen-
sional models of the tested chemicals were obtained from AM1
calculations performed by Hyperchem 7.01 software (Hypercube
Inc.). Dipole moments, partial charges, polarizabilities, and
molecular volumes were obtained by employing the algorithms
implemented in this software. Molecular parameter/activity cor-
relations were performed using Microsoft Office Excel 2007
spreadsheets (Microsoft Corp.).
given in cm-1
.
Preparation of Derivatives. The chemicals were obtained ac-
cording to the previously mentioned methodology, by a sequence
of nucleophilic substitution (side chain linkage), reductive cycli-
zation (benzoxazinone ring formation), and esterification for the
N-4 derivatives. The starting materials employed were 2-nitro-
phenols substituted at the appropriate positions: 4-fluoro-2-
nitrophenol, 4-chloro-2-nitrophenol, and 2-chloro-2-nitrophe-
nol. These compounds were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich Co.
General Procedure for Nucleophilic Substitution. The start-
ing halo-2-nitrophenol was dissolved in a 0.1 M solution of KOH
in absolute ethanol (1 mol equiv of KOH). After 1 h, the solvent
was removed under reduced pressure. The resulting alkoxide was
redissolved in DMF (50 mL/g of starting material), and 1.2 mol
equiv of the appropriate 2-halo ester was added. The reaction
mixture was stirred under argon for 24 h. After this time, ethyl
acetate (50 mL/g of starting material) was added, and the
resulting organic solutions were washed with five portions of
distilled water. The organic layers were combined and dried over
anhydrous sodium sulfate, and the solvent was distilled under
reduced pressure. The crude product was purified by column
chromatography (CC; SiO2, ethyl acetate/hexane, 20:80) to give
ethyl 2-(20-nitrophenoxy)acetates in quantitative yield (Figure 2).
General Procedure for Reductive Cyclization. Pd/C (10%
Pd, 10% w/w with respect to starting nitrophenoxyacetate) was
suspended in an aqueous solution of 1,4-dioxane (1:1) (100 mL/g
Phytotoxicity Bioassays. Target Plants. The selection of tar-
get plants was based on an optimization process carried out by us
in the search for a standard phytotoxicity evaluation bioassay
(19). This process led to several standard target species (STS)
being proposed, including monocot Allium cepa L. (onion) and
dicots Lycopersicon esculentum Will. (tomato), Lepidium sativum
L. (cress), and Lactuca sativa L. (lettuce), which were assayed for
this study.
Methodology. Bioassays were carried out using Petri dishes
(90 mm diameter) with one sheet ofWhatman No. 1 filterpaper as
the substrate. Germination and growth were conducted in aqueous
solutions at controlled pH using 10-2 M 2-(N-morpholino)ethane-
sulfonic acid (MES) and the addition of 1 M NaOH to give a pH of
6.0. Solutions (0.2, 0.1, 0.02, 0.01, and 0.002 M) of the compounds
to be assayed were prepared in DMSO and then diluted with buffer
(5 μL of DMSO/mL of buffer) to give the test concentrations for
each compound (1, 0.5, 0.1, 0.05, and 0.01 mM). This procedure
facilitated the solubility of the assayed compounds. The number of
seeds was 25 in each Petri dish. The treatment control (or internal
reference solution) (5 mL) was added to each Petri dish. Four
replicates were used for each species.
After the addition of seeds and aqueous solutions, Petri dishes
were sealed with Parafilm to ensure closed-system models. Seeds
were further incubated at 25 °C in a Memmert ICE 700 con-
trolled-environment growth chamber in the absence of light.