The Diels–Alder(D–A)reaction is one of the most powerful reactions in organic synthesis.The intermolecular D–A reaction attracts much less attentions than its intramolecular counterpart in natural product synthesis,possibly due to the issues of reactivity and selectivity.In the past decade,the intermolecular D–A reaction has been increasingly utilized in the total synthesis of structurally complex natural products.In this article,we present a few examples for the elegant applications of the intermolecular D–A reaction that are inspired by biosynthetic hypotheses of the target natural products.These examples demonstrate that D–A reaction is not only useful for preparing building blocks but also powerful for coupling structurally complicated and sterically demanding segments in a highly chemo-and stereo-controlled fashion,which may inspire further developments of intermolecular D–A reaction from both strategy and methodology perspectives.
