One of the most hotly anticipated talks of the conference was given today by James La Clair of the Xenobe Research Institute in San Diego. La Clair has been embroiled in a controversy surrounding his synthesis of a molecule called hexacyclinol, originally isolated from a mushroom (Lentinus strigosus). The synthesis was questioned for a variety of reasons, not least because he was (i) the sole author (ii) and took 37 steps to make (iii) several grammes of the complicated compound.

For many chemists, those numbers just didn’t add up. Subsequently, Scott Rychnovsky of the University of California, Irvine, argued that La Clair’s proposed structure of hexacyclinol was wrong, and really nailed it by carrying out his own total synthesis of the molecule.

‘So what?’, you might ask. It’s not the first time a natural product structure has had to be revised, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. What makes this different is how the controversy has been fanned by the rapidly-growing community of chemistry bloggers – a few can be found via the links on the left of this page – who provided a forum for everyone to pitch in with their thoughts, charitable or otherwise, on La Clair’s work.

His talk at the ACS was billed as a must-see event by the bloggers, and the consequences were incredible. Hundreds of chemists crammed into the relatively small lecture hall, with latecomers jamming every aisle. And the demographic was noticeably different from the other talks I’ve seen today – the audience consisted almost entirely of grad students and postdocs, the very people who read and contribute to the blogs that tore into La Clair. The scent of blood was in the air.

But in the end, it was a huge anticlimax. La Clair made an early nod to the controversy, before going on to discuss strategies for tagging natural products with fluorescent probes very late on in the synthetic process, as a way to help screen libraries of analogues for biological activity. There was so much biology in his mile-a-minute talk that most of the room seemed to be stunned into submission.

At the end, his ‘thank you’ slide sported a picture of the T-shirt that was made to commemorate Rychnovsky’s own synthesis, with a line of text under it appreciating the value of ‘creativity in all forms’.

So at least he’s got a sense of humour about all of this.

There was time for questions after the presentation, but no-one took the opportunity. Criticising La Clair anonymously online is one thing, but there was clearly no appetite amongst the audience to publicly put the boot in. After the room disgorged the chattering crowd into the hallway, I bumped into Dylan Stiles, host of the Tenderblog where much of the discussion about La Clair took place. He seemed a little surprised when I suggested that his blog was a large part of the reason for 500 people cramming into a hot, sweaty room to see La Claire’s presentation.

As the folks at C&EN noted earlier today, maybe Dylan just doesn’t know how famous he’s become over the last year.

You can read more reaction to La Clair’s talk from the Chem Blog, Totally Synthetic, Sceptical Chymist.