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Natural products

Emulation illuminates biosynthesis

A concise synthesis of the fungal natural product epicolactone suggests that this highly stereochemically complex yet racemic natural product may come from a cascade reaction between two polyhydroxylated arenes.

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Figure 1: The applications of pattern recognition and biosynthetic logic can be highly fruitful in natural product synthesis, both resulting in rapid molecular construction and informing practitioners of a molecule's potential origins.

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Correspondence to Noah Z. Burns.

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Mercer, J., Burns, N. Emulation illuminates biosynthesis. Nature Chem 7, 860–861 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.2377

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