Natural products made via a single parent molecule

Chemists in the US have taken inspiration from nature to devise a new concept for rapidly and efficiently synthesising structurally diverse natural products from a single common precursor. The approach, which the researchers have dubbed 'collective total synthesis', produces useful yields of a range of complex natural molecules and could open up an entirely new field of natural product synthesis. The team has produced six different alkaloids, including strychnine, using far fewer steps than is possible with conventional techniques.  More...

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2011/July/14071104.asp