Synthesizing complex molecules is a notoriously fiendish art — and a daily toil for many chemists. But Marty Burke, a chemist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says that he has found a way to create a machine that stitches molecules together at the touch of a button.
“We could bring the power of synthesis to non-specialists,” says Burke. In his system, described today in Science1, a computer controls a system of pumps and syringes to push around solutions containing compounds that can be clipped together like building blocks to create a wide variety of larger, more complicated molecules.
Burke has spent years developing the all-important building blocks, a library of organic acid molecules containing boron, called MIDA boronates. These compounds — now commercially available — are designed to have chemical groups on either end that can react with each other easily. By combining the right building blocks in the right order, Burke had already reported that it is possible to make a wide range of differently shaped larger molecules.2
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