AUTHOR=Zheng Kuan , Xie Changmin , Hong Ran TITLE=Bioinspired iterative synthesis of polyketides JOURNAL=Frontiers in Chemistry VOLUME=3 YEAR=2015 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/chemistry/articles/10.3389/fchem.2015.00032 DOI=10.3389/fchem.2015.00032 ISSN=2296-2646 ABSTRACT=

Diverse array of biopolymers and second metabolites (particularly polyketide natural products) has been manufactured in nature through an enzymatic iterative assembly of simple building blocks. Inspired by this strategy, molecules with inherent modularity can be efficiently synthesized by repeated succession of similar reaction sequences. This privileged strategy has been widely adopted in synthetic supramolecular chemistry. Its value also has been reorganized in natural product synthesis. A brief overview of this approach is given with a particular emphasis on the total synthesis of polyol-embedded polyketides, a class of vastly diverse structures and biologically significant natural products. This viewpoint also illustrates the limits of known individual modules in terms of diastereoselectivity and enantioselectivity. More efficient and practical iterative strategies are anticipated to emerge in the future development.