Sergio J Álvarez-Méndez

Universidad de La Laguna | ULL · Antonio Gonzalez Bioorganic Institute

Soils play a very important role in ecosystems sustainability, either natural or agricultural ones, serving as an essential support for living organisms of different kinds. However, in the current context of extremely high plastic pollution, soils are highly threatened. Plastics can change the chemical and physical properties of the soils and may a...

Around one million metric ton of plastics is produced worldwide daily. Plastic contamination is aggravated when the particles reach sizes between 5 mm and 1 μm, giving rise to microplastics, which are omnipresent in the environment, especially in agroecosystems. To appreciate the magnitude of this problem, this review analyzes 177 scientific works...

Salinity is a serious threat for global agriculture, especially in arid and semi-arid regions where its incidence leads to considerable damages in the crop growth and production. Carica papaya L. is currently one of the most cultivated fruit crops in the tropical and subtropical areas, and generally, papaya cultivars exhibit a moderate sensitivity...

Aim of study: In most areas of vineyards worldwide, cultivars are frequently grafted on specific rootstocks to avoid Daktulosphaira vitifoliae pest attack. Nevertheless, the absence of this pest in Canary Islands allowed the chance to conserve and cultivate traditional or new own-rooted genotypes without the requirement of the rootstocks. To invest...

The current lack of natural water resources, mainly due to the absence of sufficient precipitation and the deterioration of irrigation water (IW) quality, urgently requires a search for alternative resources, especially in arid and semiarid areas. Desalination of sea water is well established in numerous regions where water is scarce. To investigat...

Scientific literature is inundated with secondary metabolites from marine sources. In this ocean of natural products, the presence of recurring patterns has traditionally led scientists to unravel the biosynthetic mechanisms that naturally yield these products, as well as to imitate Nature to prepare them in the laboratory, especially when promisin...

Vibrio campbellii is a major pathogen in aquaculture. It is a causative agent of the so-called ‘luminescent vibriosis’, a life-threatening condition caused by bioluminescent Vibrio spp. that often involves mass mortality of farmed shrimps. The emergence of multidrug resistant Vibrio strains raises a concern and poses a challenge for the treatment o...

A direct and general method for the synthesis of naturally occurring 2,3,4,5,6-pentasubstituted tetrahydropyrans has been developed, employing β,γ-unsaturated N-acyl oxazolidin-2-ones as key starting materials. The combination of the Evans aldol addition and the Prins cyclization allowed the diastereoselective and efficient generation of the desire...

An improved protocol for the synthesis of enantiomerically pure allylic amines is reported. N-Protected α-amino esters derived from natural amino acids were submitted to a one-pot tandem reduction-olefination process. The sequential reduction with DIBAL-H at -78 °C and subsequent in situ addition of organophosphorus reagents yielded the correspondi...

The first total synthesis of the bioactive natural product 2,6-(E,E)-thymifodioic acid, also called incanic acid, and its stereoisomers is described. An unified, iterative and modular strategy was envisioned, achieving the synthesis of the goals products after five steps reactions in an overall yield ranging from 8% to 16%. The key step is a non-ex...

A general and stereoselective method to synthesize 2,3,4,5,6-pentasubstituted tetrahydropyrans in three steps starting from three different aldehydes is described. Key substrates β,γ-unsaturated N-acyloxazolidin-2-ones were submitted to an “Evans Aldol–Prins” protocol to generate five σ-bonds and five stereocenters in an only one-pot process with y...

The chemical study of the red alga Laurencia viridis has led to the isolation of four new polyether triterpenoids: 28-hydroxysaiyacenol B (2), saiyacenol C (3), 15,16-epoxythyrsiferol A (4), and 15,16-epoxythyrsiferol B (5). The structures of 2 and 3 were established mainly by NMR data analysis and comparison with the well-known metabolite dehydrot...

A general and practical protocol for the tertiary-amine-catalysed synthesis of β-alkoxyacrylates from primary, secondary, and tertiary alcohols is described. Of the currently used catalysts, DABCO proved to be the best one for this process. Three factors seem to influence the outcome of the reaction: (1) the nucleophilic strength of the catalyst, (...