Explanation
This collection of short natural product syntheses (a few "unnatural" products are also included. e.g. cubane, twistane, triquinacene) was initially assembled over many years as a source of classroom examples, problems, and examination questions in a senior undergraduate/beginning graduate level course in organic chemistry. It has since matured into a comprehensive summary of the many techniques and reagents used in total synthesis. It serves as a interesting and unique guide to which of these are actually being used in natural product synthesis. For example, LiNiPr2. is the most commonly used reagent in organic synthesis (ignoring NEt3, which is often present only to neutralize acid, and not an active partipant in the molecular transformation).
The syntheses were selected for the inclusion of one or more key reactions that illustrate important transformation of general utility (syntheses which used a minimum of "magic reactions" were preferred), for their brevity, and for a presentation style in the original journal that permitted ready preparation of the synthetic schemes.
Currently the name of the synthetic target is indexed, and there are compound Names, Reactions, Reagents, Named Reactions, Rings, Chemoselectivity (competition) and chronological indices (Year). These indices will continue to be improved and expanded in future releases.
Acknowledgments: This website is made possible by a generous allocation of server space and bandwidth from, previously, the Department of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin, and, now, ACS Division of Organic Chemistry. I also thank the National Science Foundation for financial support. Prof. Kevin Jantzi (Valparaiso University) looked up many of the DOI references, and | thank him for his efforts on this onerous task. I also thank contributors to this collection: Mateusz Plesniak (20), Kris Kolonko (6). Amanda Jones (1), Kristen Plessel (1), Almaz Jalilov (1). and Kevin Schultz (1).
Professor Hans Reich