CHAPTER 9: Reaction Searching

If you have done any form of synthetic chemistry, chances are that you have performed at least one graphical reaction search. You draw the reactant, the product, or both participants into the structure editor of an electronic resource that searches reaction schema, click the “search” button, sit back, and wait for results to fill your screen. If you are searching for an approach to the synthesis of a novel molecule, you probably employed substructures in your reactant, your product, or both. This chapter will examine general techniques in graphical reaction searching before presenting various resources that allow graphical or textual methods of finding reaction information and then will review several different sources of information about reactions and reagents. We will focus mainly on the reactions of organic and organometallic substances, as those are the ones treated most fully by the available reaction search tools.