Oriented Synthesis Developing New Chemical Tools to Probe and Modulate Biological Systems

Diversity-Oriented Synthesis Developing New Chemical Tools to Probe and Modulate Biological Systems 

Warren R. J. D. Galloway, David Wilck Feilin Nie, Kathy Hadje-Georgiou, Luca Laraia, and David R. Spring 

The molecules comprising small-molecule screening collections maybe obtained from natural (natural products) or nonnatural (chemical synthesis) sources [4]. 

Chemical compounds can be characterized by a wide variety of molecular descriptors such as physiochemical properties (e.g., their lipophilicity) and topological features (e.g., degree of branching) [5, 61. The term chemical space is commonly used in place of multi-dimensional descriptor space it is a region defined by a particular selection of molecular descriptors and the upper and lower values (limits) placed upon them [5,6]. In the context of small-molecule collections, chemical space is generally defined as the total descriptor space that encompasses all small carbon-based molecules that could, in principle, be created [5,6]. Each chemically unique small molecule will have a unique set of molecular properties and thus moleculardescriptorvalues,and will therefore reside at a discrete point in chemical space [5]. 

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