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Nature 457, 548-549 (29 January 2009) | doi:10.1038/457548a; Published online 28 January 2009

Open Innovation Challenges

Organic chemistry: Chlorine lends a helping hand

D. Karl Bedke1 & Christopher D. Vanderwal1

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The development of synthetic routes to unusual and complex molecules frequently leads to surprising lessons about chemical reactivity. The first synthesis of a marine toxin provides just such a lesson.

Shellfish toxins cause illness and death in people who ingest the tainted organisms, and can affect populations of fish and other marine animals1. Perhaps surprisingly, these compounds also have a central role in the history of organic chemistry, because their complex structures provide synthetic targets that both stretch the limits of the field and spur the development of new reactions that go on to find use elsewhere — much as the space race spawned technologies that have found a home in many other walks of life.

  1. D. Karl Bedke and Christopher D. Vanderwal are in the Department of Chemistry, University of California, Irvine, California 92697, USA.
    Email: cdv@uci.edu

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