There are several Akabori amino acid reactions, which are named after Shirō Akabori ( Japanese: 赤堀 四郎) (1900–1992), a Japanese chemist.
In the first reaction, an α- amino acid is oxidised and undergoes decarboxylation to give an aldehyde at the former α position by heating with oxygen in the presence of a reducing sugar. [1] [2] [3] This reaction is useful for preparing dichlorophthalimido derivatives[ how?] of peptides for mass spectral analysis. [4]
In the second reaction, an α- amino acid, or an ester of it, is reduced by sodium amalgam and ethanolic HCl to give an α-amino aldehyde. [5] [6] This process is conceptually similar to the Bouveault–Blanc reduction [7] [8] [9] except that it stops at the aldehyde stage rather than reducing the ester all the way to two alcohols.