A synthesis method that uses just one chemical reaction and 12 building blocks could allow chemists to automate construction of the backbones of thousands of small molecules.

This kind of modular simplicity is standard in the laboratory synthesis of proteins, nucleotides and, increasingly, carbohydrates. Martin Burke and his colleagues at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign analysed more than 2,800 natural products, including pharmaceuticals, that contain polyene motifs — chains of carbon atoms connected by alternating single and double bonds. The researchers report that more than 75% of polyene structures can be made by sequentially linking building blocks from a small library of organic acid molecules that contain boron. These 'MIDA-boronates' were invented by Burke's group and are commercially available.

This approach avoids the need to invent a customized method for every polyene-containing compound, the authors say.

Nature Chem. http://doi.org/ssv (2014)