Tosyl Memes

Just when organic chemists thought they'd seen it all, someone drops the molecular equivalent of a mixtape. TsPM is the new hot thing in the lab—because apparently naming compounds after your favorite Pokémon wasn't confusing enough. This monster protecting group looks like it was designed by a grad student who stayed up for 72 hours straight and thought "you know what this reaction needs? MORE RINGS!" Synthetic chemists will now spend the next decade finding increasingly creative ways to abbreviate this in their lab notebooks while pretending they totally meant to add that extra methoxy group. The real chemistry flex isn't making your compound—it's making your colleagues pronounce your protecting group in group meeting.