Total synthesis of both enantiomers of the biosurfactant aureosurfactin via bidirectional synthesis with a chiral Horner-Wittig building block.

Aureosurfactin is a novel biosurfactant that exhibits similar surface tension activity to known biosurfactants. In this work, we now report a facile synthesis for aureosurfactin using a bidirectional synthetic strategy. Both enantiomers of the target compound were accessed from the ( S )-building block, derived from the same chiral pool starting material.