The application of computers to generate organic syntheses

A major task of organic chemistry is the synthesis of compounds of interest (“targets”) from available starting compounds. We address here the generation by computer of the best synthesis routes, or sequences of reactions, to such compounds. The number of possible routes in the search space is enormous and so the reasoning is examined in some detail, leading to a protocol for the operation of our program, SYNGEN, which has been under development for some years. It requires a new representation of the data – molecular structures and their reactions – which is digital in format and quite unlike the usual graphical depictions of organic chemistry. This is presented as a problem in artificial intelligence, and every effort has been made to present it with a minimum background of organic chemistry required of the reader.