A “Chemical Internet” That Could Save Lives

Via "Living on Earth" comes news of the electronic inventorying of all known chemical reactions for every chemical known to humankind that "can track the almost infinite number of possible chemical reactions to find the quickest, cheapest and most environmental safe ways to make things."

The creators have nicknamed their effort a "chemical internet."

"What Google did for the internet–searching for names, addresses, companies, and all that–now we, by having created this chemical internet, what we're doing is a sort of a chemical Google that allows a very different way of looking at chemistry, analyzing chemistry, finding optimal synthetic pathways, new ways of making drugs. So it's a global view on chemistry, and it's based not on the knowledge of a single chemist–not on my expertise, not on the expertise of any of my colleagues, but on the expertise of every chemist who ever lived.

Imagine that we don't have to use toxic chemicals, that we can do things instead of doing five reactions, we can do just one reaction at a fraction of the cost, we can synthesize drugs a more efficient, faster way. So it's a global view on chemistry, it's going to streamline and optimize the discipline. It's going to be a very, very useful tool."