This Makes Organic More Logical

Organic Chemistry synthesis was always a bear. Frankly you just memorized what you needed and forgot it later. You needed the concepts but the details were alchemy to most. I realize that authors try to make it logical but it often falls on deaf ears especially for those of us who are never going to be chemists. Pathways, epigenetics, reaction rates, even phys chem, they all make sense, but synthesis?

I recall asking years ago if one could use a computer to do synthesis and of course the Organic Chemist looked at me as if I was asking to talk with God.

But Nature has a nice piece that seems to she light on this area. They state:

But a growing band of chemists is now trying to free the field from its artisanal roots by creating a device with the ability to fabricate any organic molecule automatically. “I would consider it entirely feasible to build a synthesis machine which could make any one of a billion defined small molecules on demand,” declares Richard Whitby, a chemist at the University of Southampton, UK. True, even a menu of one billion compounds would encompass just an infinitesimal fraction of the estimated 10⁶⁰ moderately sized carbon-based molecules that could possibly exist. But it would still be at least ten times the number of organic molecules that have ever been synthesized by humans. Such a device could thus offer an astonishing diversity of compounds for investigation by researchers developing drugs, agrochemicals or materials.

Seems logical, given what we do with genes why not! Good luck to these folks!