**5. Conclusions**

In the last decade, homogeneous gold(I)-catalyzed cyclization for the construction of small-molecule skeletons from arylalkyne substrates has been developed rapidly, owing to the ease of substrate preparation and the stability of gold catalysts.

In this feature paper, we systematically summarized the gold(I)-catalyzed syntheses of benzene, cyclopentene, furan, and pyran derivatives, which were carefully classified according to the type of arylalkyne substrate. Gold(I)-catalyzed tandem approaches for the construction of small-molecule scaffolds generally involve cyclization, isomerization, aromatization, migration, rearrangement, and other processes that are usually verified by controlled experiments and isotopic labeling experiments, as well as DFT calculations. In addition, the efficient strategies of gold catalysis were featured, with good functional group tolerance and reaction yield.

Although many excellent works have been reported with respect to gold catalysis for the syntheses of small-molecule skeletons, additional gold(I)-catalyzed asymmetric strategies are urgently required. Therefore, studies on the enantioselective construction of small-molecule scaffolds with the participation of chiral ligands will be further developed. In addition, dual gold/photoredox-catalyzed or dual gold/enzyme-catalyzed organic reactions can contribute to the development of this field [81].

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, L.Y. and Y.L.; software, H.S. and Y.S.; validation, L.Y. and S.Z.; formal analysis, H.S., S.Z. and Y.L.; investigation, L.Y., H.S., Y.S. and S.Z.; resources, L.Y. and Y.L.; data curation, L.Y.; writing—original draft preparation, L.Y. and Y.L.; writing—review and editing, L.Y., M.C. and Y.L.; visualization, L.Y. and M.C.; supervision, M.C. and Y.L.; project administration, M.C. and Y.L.; funding acquisition, L.Y. and Y.L. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21977073), the Foundation of Liaoning Province Education Administration (No. LJKZ0908 and No. LJKQZ2022236), the Liaoning Provincial Foundation of Natural Science (No. 2022-MS-245), and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2022MD723807).

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** Not applicable.

**Acknowledgments:** The authors acknowledge the Program for the Innovative Research Team of the Ministry of Education and the Program for the Liaoning Innovative Research Team in University.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
