considerable difficulties were encountered thus the reaction of 5 ethoxypentan 1 ol with a variety of 5 halovalerate alkyl esters afforded ester exchange products rather than the desired products of williamson ether synthesis accordingly a novel synthesis of the 6 12 dioxatetradecanoic acid was developed as described in example 5 below this synthesis can be summarized as follows commercially available 1 5 pentanediol was mono ethylated 2 71 using an equivalent of iodoethane and nah in thf the diol was also converted into its mono tetrahydropyranyl ether 4 54 by treatment with dihydropyran and toluenesulfonic acid in methylene chloride ngooi et al j org chem 54 911 1989 ethoxyalcohol 2 was tosylated pyridine tscl 0 u00b0 c in 40 yield to afford oily 3 the low yield reflects the need to distill this reactive ether tosylate 3 was then allowed to react with mono thp alcohol 4 nah thf reflux 24 h to afford after deprotection corey et al j am chem soc 91 4318 1969 the diether alcohol 6 in 37 yield oxidation using kiliani reagent na 2 cr 2 o 7 2h 2 o h 2 so 4 h 2 o kiliani and merk chem ber 34 3562 1901 afforded 6 12 dioxatetradecanoic acid 1 in 52 yield as a colorless oil although specific methods of preparation of the novel diheteroatom substituted fatty acid analogs are described herein it will be understood that the novel compounds of this invention are not limited to any specific method of preparation the novel diheteroatom substituted fatty acid analog compounds of the invention were analyzed in a conventional in vitro yeast n myristoyltransferase nmt assay as published by heuckeroth et al proc nat 39 l acsd sci usa 8 5 8795 8799 1988 in this assay.