Bioinspired total syntheses of natural products: a personal adventure

Bioinspired total synthesis represents an important concept to guide the designing of powerful synthetic strategies. Our group has a long-time interest and experience in designing synthetic strategies through analyzing the biosynthetic pathway of natural products. Recently, we have achieved an array of bioinspired total syntheses, which showed the great power of this approach in natural product synthesis. Documented herein is a review of these achievements which include the detailed process of how we develop these strategies. Specifically, bioinspired total synthesis of three types of natural products, namely diterpenoids (chabranol, and monocerin), alkaloids (indole, hydroquinoline, and monoterpenoid-indolidinoid hybrid), and gymnothelignans are discussed. Based on these achievements on bioinspired total synthesis, we provide some information on how to use this important strategy in natural product synthesis.