More thoughts on recovering legacy molecules – this time from names.
In journals and elsewhere we frequently come across lists like:
- 2-chloro-ethanol ClCH2CH2OH
- 2-fluoro-ethanol FCH2CH2OH
- 2-phenyl-ethanol C6H5CH2CH2OH
These all have a generic representation with “R” groups:
- RCH2CH2OH
Is there a generic name for these? Better than “2-substituted-ethanols” which doesn’t parse very nicely.
Would 2-foooyl-ethanol work? (probably too close to 2-furyl-ethanol). We could do with a simple, distinctively spelt and pronounced free variable for a generic group. That could be a useful tool in representating generic classes and also in name2structure.
I believe the standard terminology in medicinal chemistry would be ‘2-futylethanols’ which even sounds like your suggestion…
(1) Thanks Mat – excellent idea – I’ll go with this.
Yes, but futyl is even closer to furyl than footyl……
(3) excellent – we’ll call it footyl
(3) Google has very few hits for “futyl” in a chemical sense. Example:
[PDF]
Syntheses in the methyl-2-furylketone series
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat
Reaction of 8-amtno-f-(2-futyl)-l, 2, 4-trtazfLne with nitrous acid. … 3-Amtno-6-(2-futyl)-l, 2, 4-triazlne (VI). a) A solution of 3.8 g …
http://www.springerlink.com/index/JW2V3337348K0530.pdf – Similar pages – Note this
(Can’t verify as the journal is Closed Access) but looks to be a typo)
and almost none for “footyl” so we can go with that. We could coin:
footyl -R
footylidene -R-
and maybe
footoyl R-C(=O)-
though we shouldn’t take this too far.
P.
(5) It’s actual an OCR error…