An Overview of Julia-lythgoe Olefination

Abstract: Julia-Lythgoe olefination (or simply Julia olefination) is an olefination process between phenyl sulfones and aldehydes (or ketones) to give alkenes after alcohol functionalization and re-ductive elimination using sodium amalgam or SmI2. It is mainly used to synthesize E-alkenes and is a key step in numerous total syntheses of many natural products. This review exclusively deals with the Julia-Lythgoe olefination and concentrates mainly on the applications of this reaction in natural product synthesis covering literature up to 2021.