Skeletal Editing Through Single Atom Insertion and Transmutation: An Insight into A New Era of Synthetic Organic Chemistry

Considering the importance of heterocycles, which have significant favourable structures in medicinal chemistry and drug development, the single-atom insertion technique and transmutation strategy provides productive approaches towards complicated molecular structures through heterocycle diversification. Thus, it shows a potentially powerful strategy for modifying complex substrates concisely and chemospecifically. Although skeletal editing applies to cyclic and acyclic compounds, this review focused on a comprehensive study of the diversification of carbo- and heterocyclic compounds for synthesizing various medicinally important molecules via the single-atom insertion technique. The classification system is based on the recent and critical historical methods of single-atom insertion as applied to the transmutation of aromatic rings.