Nnews
I
M
A
G
E
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
O
F
R
S
C
.
O
R
G
/
C
H
E
M
I
S
T
R
Y
W
O
R
L
D
Automating Organic
Synthesis
A machine that could create organic molecules on demand
awaits appropriate software and analytical components.
pieces of the molecule, based on their
experience and expertise. Then, the
chemist must actually manually combine the raw material in the lab to synthesize the new molecule.
A few of the challenges involved
with conducting organic synthesis in
this manner are apparent. First, the hu-
THE IMAGE OF a chemist slav- ing away in a lab, haphaz- ardly pouring steaming test ubes of multi-colored liq- uid into bubbling beakers
amid stacks of leather-bound reference
books has long been relegated to old
Hollywood films or TV shows. However,
while today’s organic chemists generally spend as much or more time planning their work in advance, thinking
and laying out the sequence of reactions
that will be required to make a specific
molecule, they still largely mix, filter,
and combine substances by hand to try
to recreate those planned sequences.
The advent of the modern computer
and software packages capable of collecting, categorizing, and recombining
vast amounts of chemical proprieties
and reaction data may one day help to
automate the process of creating molecules. Described as an organic synthesis machine, it would be able to make
a huge number of small molecules on
demand, speeding the development of
new chemical research and of end products across a wide range of industries.
Organic Chemistry
The process often used to conduct or-
ganic synthesis is a technique called
retrosynthetic analysis. Chemists draw
a completed molecule and then decon-
struct it, erasing the chemical bonds
that would be easy to form, while leav-
ing fragments of molecule that are
stable or readily available. The chemist
then tries to identify the new raw ma-
terials needed to connect the missing
Science | DOI: 10.1145/2716368 Keith Kirkpatrick
