Expeditious and practical synthesis of lycopene

Our lycopene synthesis highlights the expeditious assembly of the carbon skeleton by the use of a readily available ten-carbon unit, geraniol, rather than the original natural five-carbon building block, isopentenyl pyrophosphate. Furthermore, four oxidation steps by the enzyme desaturases to produce the conjugated carbon-carbon double bonds of lycopene are merged into one-pot double elimination reactions in our synthesis. These accomplished the highly efficient synthesis of all-(E)-lycopene from geraniol through a seven-step sequence in 51% overall yield.