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| One of these things is not like the others! Credit: Synthonix, Inc. |
The Wake Forest, NC company has taken out a few full-page ads in C&EN: clean, simple black structures on white backgrounds, illustrating the wide variety of oxetane, azetidine, and spiro-heterocycles intended for stitching into med-chem lead molecules. But their latest ad, a portion of which is shown here, takes the cake.
As any Linnaean taxonomist can tell you (*Kings Play Chess On Fat Grey Stools, anyone?), classification runs deep in the scientific blood. When you consider the sheer number of organic molecules that can exist (10^60 potential molecules of 500 MW or less?!), please forgive the namers for getting a little punchy. Molecules garner nicknames based on their appearance (propellanes, cubanes), their smell (putrescine, cadaverine), or other chemists (bullvalene)!
The naming convention for small, 5-membered heterocycles proceeds thusly: start with Latin or English names of the heteroatom, and add "ole" to the end (rhymes with "pole" or "coal," not like Olé!).
Phosphorus? = phosphole. Sulfur? = thiazole. And arsenic...?
(I'll let you figure that one out)
(*Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species...Bio 101 FTW!)
