Publicado in Henry Rzepa's Blog

Alkene metathesis is part of a new generation of synthetic reaction in which a double C=C bond is formed from appropriate reactants where no bond initially exists (another example is the Wittig reaction), with the involvement of a 4-membered-ring metallacyclobutane ring 1 (again, very similar to the Wittig). I thought it might make a good addition to my collection of reaction mechanisms and so as the first step