John Michelsen wrote:
>Its because you are telling the chemists to make stuff that they can't
>yet make. That's always frustrating. :)
>> and it seems to me that this
>> damages everyone. Does anyone have any suggestions for healing this rift?
>Ya. Go take a year of organic chemistry, then start modeling things that
>chemists _can_ make, even if they are so large that it makes chemists not
>sure that they can succeed.
Thanks very much. Actually, I have taken a year of organic chemistry, although that was 20 years ago... More to the point, I didn't take the following synthetic organic chemistry course, so I wound up with an idea of typical reaction mechanisms, but unfortunately *not* with a good feeling for how difficult a typical synthesis is.
To some extent I think that what you are suggesting is happening, mostly from protein chemistry: The computational chemists are gradually getting better at solving the folding problem and its variations, and their calculations apply to proteins and peptides which *are* synthetically (or biosynthetically) accessible.
Can you suggest a good text on synthetic organic chemistry which would give a good feeling for what is currently accessible today? Are there rules of thumb (add x chemist-years per fused ring...) which are generally applicable?
Best wishes,
-Jeffrey Soreff
standard disclaimer: I do not speak for my employer.