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Concept
Click chemistry
Summary
In chemical synthesis, click chemistry is a class of simple, atom-economy reactions commonly used for joining two molecular entities of choice. Click chemistry is not a single specific reaction, but describes a way of generating products that follow examples in nature, which also generates substances by joining small modular units. In many applications, click reactions join a biomolecule and a reporter molecule. Click chemistry is not limited to biological conditions: the concept of a "click" reaction has been used in chemoproteomic, pharmacological, biomimetic and molecular machinery applications. However, they have been made notably useful in the detection, localization and qualification of biomolecules.
Click reactions occur in one pot, are not disturbed by water, generate minimal and inoffensive byproducts, and are "spring-loaded"—characterized by a high thermodynamic driving force that drives it quickly and irreversibly to high yield of a single reaction product, with high reaction specificity (in some cases, with both regio- and stereo-specificity). These qualities make click reactions particularly suitable to the problem of isolating and targeting molecules in complex biological environments. In such environments, products accordingly need to be physiologically stable and any byproducts need to be non-toxic (for in vivo systems).
By developing specific and controllable bioorthogonal reactions, scientists have opened up the possibility of hitting particular targets in complex cell lysates. Recently, scientists have adapted click chemistry for use in live cells, for example using small molecule probes that find and attach to their targets by click reactions. Despite challenges of cell permeability, bioorthogonality, background labeling, and reaction efficiency, click reactions have already proven useful in a new generation of pulldown experiments (in which particular targets can be isolated using, for instance, reporter molecules which bind to a certain column), and fluorescence spectrometry (in which the fluorophore is attached to a target of interest and the target quantified or located).
Official source
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