Reaction for Organic Synthesis , EROS

Elaboration of Reactions for Organic Synthesis (EROS) is a program for reaction prediction in organic synthesis. It explores pathways that given starting materials will follow during a reaction path and attempts to predict the products that will be obtained from those reactions. 

Synthesis design and reaction prediction can draw benefits from all these features of a computer. Our own work in this area began in 1974, and in 1978 the computer program system EROS (Elaboration of Reactions for Organic Synthesis) was first presented 6. Since then, several reports on certain aspects of the system development have appeared, but sometimes in less easily available journals or books7. Moreover, there has been no description of the overall system as it now stands. This article is intended to rectify this situation. 

The concept of a reaction may include physical and chemical changes. Some work had been done previously to model chemical reactions including the EROS (Elaboration of Reactions for Organic Synthesis) system (Gasteiger et al, 2000) and work by Sankar and Aghila (2006). PORE was developed to represent reactions as interactions between functional groups/phase systems. Each reaction would have a reaction context, which describes the pertinent descriptors of the reaction e.g. at what temperature it occurs, at... 

EROS (Elaboration of Reactions for Organic Synthesis) is a program system for the prediction of chemical reactions and the design of organic synthesis. Work on this system started more than 12 years ago. At the outset, in the overall design two fundamental decisions were taken (2) ... 

Gasteiger, J., Hutchings, M. G., Christoph, B., Gann, L., Hiller, C., Low, P., Marsili, M., Sailer, H., Yuki, K. A New Treatment of Chemical Reactivity Development of EROS (Elaboration of Reactions for Organic Synthesis), an Expert System for Reaction Prediction and Synthesis Desi . Top. Curr. Chem. 1987,137, 19-73. 

We are now presenting EROS (Elaboration of Reactions for Organic Synthesis) which has matured to the point of becoming a routine tool for the synthetic chemist. 

This work is available on-line as eEROS. The Encyclopedia of Reagents for Organic Synthesis, e-EROS, provides updated information on 3800 reagents with a database of close to 50,000 reactions. Each reagent entry includes properties such as physical data, solubility, form supplied in, purification, and preparative methods examples of use in reactions and literature references. Search options include name, CAS number, structure and reaction. 

Clearly, for symmetry reasons, the reverse process should also be considered. In fact, early versions of our reaction prediction and synthesis design system EROS [21] contained the reaction schemes of Figures 3-13, 3-15, and 3-16 and the reverse of the scheme shown in Figure 3-16. These four reaction schemes and their combined application include the majority of reactions observed in organic chemistry. Figure 3-17 shows a consecutive application of the reaction schemes of Figures 3-16 and 3-13 to model the oxidation of thioethers to sulfoxides. 

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