Synthesis and biological activities of novel 5-substituted-1,3,4-oxadiazole Mannich bases and bis-Mannich bases as ketol-acid reductoisomerase inhibitors

Abstract A series of novel 5-substituted-1,3,4-oxadiazole Mannich bases and bis-Mannich bases have been conveniently synthesized in good yields. Their structures were characterized by IR, 1 H NMR, 13 C NMR and elemental analysis. The preliminary bioassay results indicated that some of the compounds showed promising in vitro fungicidal activities towards several test plant fungi; some of them exhibited significant herbicidal activities against Brassica campestris and excellent in vitro inhibitory activities against rice ketol-acid reductoisomerase (KARI). Among 14 novel compounds, 8c , 8d and 8m showed potent KARI inhibitory activities with K i value of (0.96 ± 0.42), (3.86 ± 0.49) and (3.10 ± 0.71) μmol/L, respectively, and were comparable with IpOHA. These compounds could be novel KARI inhibitors for further investigation. The density functional theory (DFT) calculations and molecular docking were carried out to study the structure–activity relationship (SAR) of the active inhibitors in this Letter.