EXPERIMENTS ON THE SYNTHESIS OF SUBSTANCES RELATED TO TETRACYCLINES Ⅱ. SYNTHESIS OF 2,4,6-TRIHYDROXY-5-OXO- 5, 12-DIHYDRONAPHTHACENE

Although the structures of the antibiotics tetracyclines have been elucidated by degradative studies, the important degradation products and the antibiotics themselves have yet not been synthesized. As desdimethylaminoterrarubein(I) retains the carbon skeleton and most of the functional groups of terramycin, its synthesis would provide further evidence for the structures of the antibiotics tetracyclines. This paper deals only with a model experiment in the synthetic studies of desdimethylaminoterrarubein.