SYSTEMATIC ORGANIZATION OF SYNTHETIC REACTIONS

A base of description of organic structure first defines the kind and number of four important kinds of attachments to a single carbon. From this may be derived two interconnected descriptions of a reaction. Linear digital descriptions of the strand of carbons involved in the reaction may be listed for substrate and for product. Also the change in the reaction may be denoted by the kind of attachment made and that broken for each carbon. A single reaction step is defined as one with only a unit exchange in attachment at any involved carbon. This system allows a systematic organization of all possible synthetic reactions in a simple but rigorous format. The basic parent reactions are developed first, then a set of ways to modify these to more complex variants. The reactions can be presented in a compact graphical form, and the system can be utilized to describe and find all possible pathways for multistep reaction sequences between specified generalized substrates and products. © 1979, American Chemical Society. All rights reserved.