I’m done with organic lectures so this isn’t a homework question but reading up on the synthesis of Tamiflu from Shikimic Acid and it made me think of organic chemistry where we learned about 50-60 synthesis reactions and had to invent methods of creating products by using these 50-60 reactions. ie, you’d start with a carbon chain and have to make something totally different via a string of chemical reactions.
Right now there are computer programs where if you draw the chemical structure, the program will give you the name and programs where if you give the name they give you a chemical structure. Are there programs where you draw out the goal product, give the potential starting products and have the computer figure out the best way to synthesize the product? It seems like a really good idea. Just take a computer program and give it a few thousand organic synthesis reactions and then plug in what you want to end up with, what you are starting with and tell the program what is most important in the synthesis (number of steps, cost, waste products given off, final product yield, etc) and the program figures out the steps you need to take. Are there computer programs like this?