Recently, Professor Shi Dayong's team from the State Key Laboratory of Microbial Technology at Shandong University published a research paper titled "Visible light-induced cobalt-catalyzed 1,3-diphosphination of alkenes" in Green Chemistry. Postgraduate Wenlong Shan from the 2022 cohort of the State Key Laboratory of Microbial Technology is the first author, with Professor Shi Dayongas the corresponding author. The State Key Laboratory of Microbial Technology at Shandong University is the first completion unit and the corresponding author's unit.

Organophosphorus compounds are important substances widely used as ligands or organic catalysts in various transformation reactions, as well as serving roles as drugs and biologically active molecules. Traditional methods for constructing 1,3-diphosphine compounds are greatly limited due to the need for pre-functionalized starting materials, air-sensitive reagents, and harsh reaction conditions. Therefore, developing a method for synthesizing 1,3-diphosphine compounds from simple and readily available starting materials with high atom and step economy is of significant research importance.

Professor Shi Dayong's team has been dedicated to designing new reaction modes from the perspective of synthetic chemistry, exploring how to rapidly create complex molecules with diverse structures and novel backbones from simple substrates, and obtaining potentially valuable lead compounds. As a sustainable and versatile strategy for constructing complex chemical structures from simple feedstock, the direct difunctionalization of alkenes has received a great deal of attention and interest. Compared to the abundant studies on the 1,2-difunctionalization of alkenes, the nascent area of 1,3- functionalization has emerged as a novel route for the modern development of alkene transformations, which has been significantly applied in the synthesis of various complex molecules and pharmaceutical targets. Recently, the authors made a significant breakthrough in the field of visible light catalysis, reporting a novel cobalt-catalyzed radical 1,3-diphosphination of alkenes, which enables straightforward access to 1,3-diphosphine skeleton compounds under mild conditions without additional oxidants and photosensitizers. This transformation features excellent functional group tolerance, operational simplicity, and high atom economy, and is amenable for late-stage functionalization of complex molecule skeletons. Preliminary bioactivity studies reveal that some valuable 1,3-diphosphine products show potential antitumor activity.

This research was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China, the Shandong Provincial Joint Fund, the Shandong Provincial Youth Fund, and the Qingdao Municipal Fund. The Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectrometer at the Shandong University Core Facilities for Life and Environmental Sciences provided crucial support for this work.