Abstract
We present a unified step-economical strategy to access histone deacetylase inhibitory peptides, based on late-stage installation of zinc-binding functionalities via the cleavage of the strained cyclopropane ring in the common pluripotent cyclopropanol precursor. The efficacy of the proposed diversity-oriented approch has been validated by short stereoselective synthesis of a natural product chlamydocin and a number of its analogs.