> Natural products chemistry is getting trickier all the time
So now there's "natural" chemistry and "plain" chemistry? I thought molecules are molecules, and don't care how they came to be. What if humans were to artificially select some bacteria over a few generations to synthesize a certain molecule. Would that molecule now be "natural" or synthetic? In fact, it can be argued that many "natural" molecules are a result of that exact process, because their synthesizing organism has evolved to survive human effects.
EDIT: as pointed out by localhost, natural products chemistry is actually a well defined -- and widely accepted -- term.
If you do a quick search for Natural Products in Google Scholar, and you'll see that this is a widely accepted term in organic chemistry.
Now, what you're saying is something that generally irritates me to no end - differentiating between "synthetic" and "natural". An alkene is an alkene, regardless of whether it was synthesized by a natural process or in a reactor.
In fact I’d half-expect that synthetic products be generally safer, since you know exactly what you’re making and the extent to which it may be adulterated. If I want to eat everything that comes from the vanilla bean, I can buy extract. But if I want just vanillin, I can buy exactly that.
Well, there is natural products chemistry, which is anything that is produced directly from biology. It is a useful thing to keep track of as if something complex is being produced by a biological process you can hook into it for precursors to make other complex molecules more easily. You can also completely synthesize a natural product and it doesn't stop the status of the chemical. All the name means is that it is known to be existent as the output of a biological process.
So now there's "natural" chemistry and "plain" chemistry? I thought molecules are molecules, and don't care how they came to be. What if humans were to artificially select some bacteria over a few generations to synthesize a certain molecule. Would that molecule now be "natural" or synthetic? In fact, it can be argued that many "natural" molecules are a result of that exact process, because their synthesizing organism has evolved to survive human effects.
EDIT: as pointed out by localhost, natural products chemistry is actually a well defined -- and widely accepted -- term.