of thousands to millions of 'virtual' compounds. The researcher will select a subset of the 'virtual library' for actual synthesis, based upon various calculations and criteria (see ADME, computational chemistry, and QSAR). Polymers (peptides and oligonucleotides) Combinatorial split-mix (split and pool) synthesis Combinatorial split-mix (split and pool) synthesis is based on the solid-phase synthesis developed by Merrifield. If a combinatorial peptide library is synthesized using 20 amino acids (or other kinds of building blocks) the bead form solid support is divided into 20 equal portions. This is followed by coupling a different amino acid to each portion. The third step is the mixing of all portions. These three steps comprise a cycle. Elongation of the peptide chains can be realized by simply repeating the steps of the cycle. The procedure is illustrated by the synthesis of a dipeptide library using the same three amino acids as building blocks in both cycles. Each component of this library contains two amino acids arranged in different orders. The amino acids used in couplings are represented by yellow, blue and red circles in the figure. Divergent arrows show dividing solid support resin (green circles) into equal portions, vertical arrows mean coupling and convergent arrows represent mixing and homogenizing the portions of the support. The figure shows that in the two synthetic cycles 9 dipeptides are formed. In the third and fourth cycles, 27 tripeptides and 81 tetrapeptides would form, respectively. The "split-mix synthesis" has several outstanding features: It is highly efficient. As the figure demonstrates the number of peptides formed in the synthetic process (3, 9, 27, 81) increases exponentially with the number of executed cycles. Using 20 amino acids in each synthetic cycle the number of formed peptides are: 400, 8,000, 160,000 and 3,200,000, respectively. This means that the number of peptides increases exponentially with the number of the executed cycles. All peptide sequences are formed in the process that can be deduced by a combination of the amino acids used in the cycles. Portioning of the support into equal samples assures formation of the components of the library in nearly equal molar quantities. Only a single peptide forms on each bead of the support. This is the consequence of using only one amino acid in the coupling steps. It is completely unknown, however, which is the peptide that occupies a selected bead. The split-mix method can be used for the synthesis of