Introduction to retrosynthetic analysis: basic concepts, simplification methods, and application

Retrosynthetic analysis is the cornerstone of organic synthesis, allowing scientists to simplify complex target molecules into small fragments by disconnecting bonds. This review details basic concepts and common simplifying methods that scientists used in the retrosynthetic analysis. By using straightforward language and rich examples, the beginners can gain an overall understanding of retrosynthetic analysis and start to use techniques that they learned in this review to design synthetic pathways on paper. The last part provides a possible synthetic pathway for dihydrolucilactaene, a new potent drug for malaria, using the simplifying methods mentioned above.