Polyfunctional compounds

Although each of the functional groups introduced above has a characteristic set of favoured reactions, it is not always possible to predict the properties of organic compounds that contain several different functional groups. In polyfunctional organic compounds, the functional groups often interact with one another to impart unique reactivity patterns to the compounds. As chemistry evolves as a science, it becomes possible to understand more of the behaviour of complex molecules, and chemists are able to design laboratory syntheses of increasingly complicated molecules, basing the synthetic plan upon the reactivity trends of functional groups.