Commercially available asymmetric 4-(trichloromethyl)-2-oxetanone serves as a convenient staging point for the preparation of a variety of heterocycles.  We have devised concise routes to asymmetric disubstituted butyrolactones and to deoxy-C-glycosides from the trichloromethyl beta-lactone.  These approaches avoid protecting group strategies and offer access to numerous analogs for diversity-oriented synthesis applications.  These new methods and associated efforts will be disclosed.