New directions in natural product synthesis

Abstract

Research in the total synthesis of natural products has changed considerably in recent years. Much of the research effort has moved away from only focusing on the synthesis of a specific natural product, and instead toward the development of general synthetic strategies that enable the synthesis of a broad family of natural products. The new approach offers considerable advantages because the new synthetic strategies are often very flexible and thus, can have lasting influence on the field of organic synthesis. This thematic issue highlights several of the recently developed synthetic strategies and illustrates their flexibility for the synthesis of complex natural products. The thematic issue also includes reviews on visual algorithms to compare the efficiency of different total syntheses and computational approaches that can assist in the design of new total synthesis approaches.

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