Semisynthesis
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"Semisynthesis" or partial chemical synthesis uses compounds isolated from natural sources (e.g. plant material or bacterial or cell cultures) as starting materials. These natural compounds are usually large and complex molecules. This is opposed to a classical chemical synthesis where large molecules are synthesized from a stepwise combination of small and cheap (petrochemical) building blocks.
Semisynthesis is usually used when the precursor molecule is too structurally complex, too costly or too inefficient to be produced by total synthesis.
Drugs derived from natural sources are usually produced by harvesting the natural source or through semisynthetic methods: one example is the semisynthesis of LSD from ergotamine, which is isolated from ergot fungus cultures.
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