N. Nishiwaki et al., NOVEL RING TRANSFORMATION OF NITROPYRIMIDINONE - SYNTHETIC EQUIVALENTOF ALPHA-NITROFORMYLACETIC ACID, Journal of the Chemical Society. Perkin transactions. I, (16), 1997, pp. 2261-2262
3-Methyl-5-nitropyrimidin-4(3H)-one reacts with ketones in the presenc
e of ammonium salts to afford disubstituted pyrimidines and disubstitu
ted 3-nitro-2-pyridones in a novel ring transformation reaction; nitro
pyrimidinone behaves as an activated diformylamine in the former case,
and as a synthetic equivalent of alpha-nitroformylacetic acid in the
latter case.