Organic synthesis

Organic synthesis is the design and execution of chemical reactions that produce organic compounds from simpler starting materials. It combines reaction planning, experimental technique, and purification to make molecules with chosen structures.

Reaction mechanism: A stepwise account of how a chemical reaction transforms reactants into products through bond-making and bond-breaking events. Mechanisms let chemists assess whether a proposed sequence can produce the intended structure.
Organic reaction: A chemical transformation that changes the bonding or functional groups of an organic molecule. Synthetic routes are assembled from successive organic reactions.
Total synthesis: The chemical construction of a complex natural product from relatively simple starting materials. It tests whether a target molecule can be built through a deliberately designed route.
Total synthesis versus biosynthesis: A comparison between laboratory chemical construction of a natural product and its formation through biological pathways. It distinguishes human-designed reaction sequences from enzyme-directed production in organisms.
Robert Burns Woodward: An American chemist known for landmark syntheses of complex natural products and advances in structural chemistry. His total syntheses made route design a rigorous and visible intellectual discipline.
Retrosynthetic analysis: A planning method that works backward from a target molecule to simpler precursors using known chemical transformations. It turns a target structure into a sequence of feasible starting materials and reactions.
Named reaction: An organic reaction commonly identified by the name of a chemist or chemists associated with its discovery or development. Named reactions provide recognizable patterns for converting common starting materials.
Medicinal chemistry: The discipline that designs, synthesizes, and studies molecules to discover and optimize medicines. Synthetic chemistry supplies candidate compounds and enables systematic structural changes.
Biocatalysis: The use of enzymes or whole cells to catalyze chemical transformations. Biocatalysis offers a biological alternative to many conventional synthetic steps.
Elias James Corey: An American organic chemist who developed retrosynthetic analysis and made major contributions to organic synthesis. His formal approach gave chemists a systematic language for planning routes backward.

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