Déjà vu, LPU

Remember when I posted about the highly-similar cyclobutane insertion chemistry coming out of the Cramer group? Well, a new contestant has just been published in ACIEE:

Source: Cramer, ACIEE 2014

I jumped down the rabbit-hole of the Supporting Information, and returned with these two "general" procedures - blink, and you'll miss the differences!

Source: Cramer et. al., ACIEE 2014, February

Source: Cramer et. al., ACIEE, 2014, July

Same catalyst precursor. Same ligand (well, different enantiomer). Same solvent. Same time. Similar reaction temps and purification conditions. Now, I'm not saying that the Cramer group shouldn't have published this paper, but in the same journal? With essentially the same substrates?

Does anyone else believe that these could have been published together, in a single high-impact paper?

Cyclobutanone Déjà vu

Didn't I just see that reaction? [rubs eyes]

From the laboratory of Prof. Nicolai Cramer (EPF Lausanne) comes some really neat examples of cyclobutanone C-C activation. Just mix with ~2 mol% of cationic Rh(I), and presto! Out comes a [3.1.2] bicyclo product reminiscent of several neuroactive natural products.

Oftentimes, a catalytic reaction will go gangbusters, but will stubbornly refuse all attempts at asymmetric induction. Apparently not so here - Cramer reports the asymmetric version in ACIEE about two weeks after the initial Organometallics report!

Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2014, ASAP

Organometallics 2014, ASAP

Honestly, I might never have noticed, except the TOC graphics for both are nearly identical: a comic pair of orange scissors "snipping" apart the cyclobutanone ring.

So, readers, what's your take? Can't wait to see this reaction applied to a challenging target? Or, a strange choice of synthetic "least publishable units" (LPUs)?