Analytical Chemistry Techniques

Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have shown how to synthesize in the laboratory an important set of natural compounds known as terpenes. The largest class of chemicals made by living organisms, terpenes are made within cells by some of the most complex chemical reactions found in biology.

The new technique, described in an advance online edition of the journal Nature Chemistry on Sept

. 23, 2012, mimics a crucial but obscure biochemical phenomenon that allows cells to make terpenes. The discovery may one day result in cheaper, fully synthetic versions of the cancer drug Taxol, the antimalarial compound artemisinin and hundreds of other useful terpene products.

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