Reply to Correspondence on "Unlocking the Chain-Walking Process in Gold Catalysis".

We recently reported the gold-catalyzed Heck and chain-walking reactions, which utilize migratory insertion, β-hydride elimination steps in a catalytic fashion. Budzelaar et al. in their correspondence state that these reactions proceed through gold-catalyzed alkene heteroarylation followed by acid-mediated elimination and cyclization sequence. In response to this correspondence, we have conducted some experiments which convinced us that the product formation solely can not be rationalized based on hetero-arylation of alkenes under ligand-enabled Au(I)/Au(III) catalysis.