Automatic Extraction of Reaction Templates for Synthesis Prediction

Several tools for the computational planning of synthetic routes have been developed over the last 60 years. Traditionally these have been built on manually or automatically extracted reaction rules or templates obtained from a deep knowledge of organic chemistry in the case of the former, and reaction databases for the latter. Herein we give an introductory overview to the process of automatically extracting reaction templates, starting from methods for reaction centre identification, through to their use in computer aided synthesis planning and the de novo design of compounds.