Friday, June 25, 2010

Click chemistry in protein fatty acylation and prenylation

Nature Chemical Biology, Published online June 17, 2010 

The above and many other click chemistry reagents were chemically synthesized, metabolically or enzymatically introduced into target proteins to effect extremely sensitive detection, by western blotting or in-gel fluorescence. The applications of these probes are: identifying new lipid-modified proteins, analyzing the lipid content of cellular proteins, imaging lipid-modified proteins in cells, and tools for protein labeling in vitro. 

The success lies on the qualities of click chemistry: reaction efficiency, functional group and reaction condition tolerance,  small size of azido and alkenyl groups, etc.   
         

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Click chemistry for conjugated molecular wire














J. Am. Chem. Soc., Article ASAP, DOI: 10.1021/ja103239b
Publication Date (Web): June 15, 2010

The article demonstrates a beautiful example of click chemistry for the synthesis of long (>4nm) pi-conjugated wires (all-aromatic backbone structure) bonded to metal electrodes.

Elegantly designed, nicely executed, fully characterized, and convincingly presented.

Aromatic and rigid triazole structure from click chemistry is explored to deliver the unique property for the applications in materials science and nanotechnology.  

The measurement confirms the length-dependent conductance and mechanism transition.
                                

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Carolyn Bertozzi awarded Lemelson-MIT Prize for work including click chemistry

http://www.mit.edu/press/2010/500k-lemelson.html

By MIT press release of June 2nd, 2010, Carolyn Bertozzi was selected for the prestigious 2010 $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize.

Her contribution in the field of biotechnology includes: Bioorthogonal reactions, or biocompatible click chemistry, or the copper-free version; Glycobiology innovations and imaging glycans; Genetically-encoded aldehyde tags; Cell nanoinjector.

The bioorthogonal click chemistry yielded in vivo imaging of sugar molecules in live animals. The aldehyde tag technology is the basis for the company Redwood Bioscience

Her response? "This came completely out of the sky - it's totally stunning news."  
               

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Click chemistry in medical imaging

http://pubs.acs.org/toc/chreay/110/5
May 12, 2010, Chemical Reviews, 110 (5), Pages 2575-3298  
2010 Medical Imaging and Diagnostics special issue

This issue highlights the current status of medical imaging with two dozen review papers. What a role has click chemistry played in this specific field? An examination shows that seven of the articles cited click chemistry in a wide range of applications:

Fluorescent Analogs of Biomolecular Building Blocks: Design, Properties, and Applications;
Activatable Photosensitizers for Imaging and Therapy;
Technetium and Gallium Derived Radiopharmaceuticals: Comparing and Contrasting the Chemistry of Two Important Radiometals for the Molecular Imaging Era;  
Macromolecules, Dendrimers, and Nanomaterials in Magnetic Resonance Imaging: The Interplay between Size, Function, and Pharmacokinetics; 
Peptides and Peptide Hormones for Molecular Imaging and Disease Diagnosis;
Multimodality Imaging Probes: Design and Challenges;
Phage Display in Molecular Imaging and Diagnosis of Cancer

Click chemistry in most cases is used as an improvement or addition to the developing medical imaging field. Some are included in patents or patent applications; some are under clinical studies.