Chiral pool

The chiral pool is a "collection of abundant enantiopure building blocks provided by nature" used in synthesis. In other words, a chiral pool would be a large quantity of common organic enantiomers. Contributors to the chiral pool are amino acids, sugars, and terpenes. Their use improves the efficiency of total synthesis. Not only does the chiral pool contribute a premade carbon skeleton, their chirality is usually preserved in the remainder of the reaction sequence.

This strategy is especially helpful if the desired molecule resembles cheap enantiopure natural products. Many times, suitable enantiopure starting materials cannot be identified. The alternative to the use of the chiral pool is asymmetric synthesis, whereby achiral precursors are employed or racemic intermediates are resolved.