The use of covalent chemistry to track biomolecules in their native environment—a focus of bioorthogonal chemistry—has received considerable interests recently among chemical biologists and organic chemists alike. To facilitate wider adoption of bioorthogonal chemistry in biomedical research, a central effort in the last few years has been focused on the optimization of a few known bioorthogonal reactions, particularly with respective to reaction kinetics improvement, novel genetic encoding systems, and fluorogenic reactions for bioimaging. During these optimizations, three strategies have emerged, including the use of ring strain for substrate activation in the cycloaddition reactions, the discovery of new ligands and privileged substrates for accelerated metal-catalysed reactions, and the design of substrates with pre-fluorophore structures for rapid “turn-on” fluorescence after selective bioorthogonal reactions. In addition, new bioorthogonal reactions based on either modified or completely unprecedented reactant pairs have been reported. Finally, increasing attention has been directed toward the development of mutually exclusive bioorthogonal reactions and their applications in multiple labeling of a biomolecule in cell culture. In this feature article, we wish to present the recent progress in bioorthogonal reactions through the selected examples that highlight the above-mentioned strategies. Considering increasing sophistication in bioorthogonal chemistry development, we strive to project several exciting opportunities where bioorthogonal chemistry can make a unique contribution to biology in near future.

Bioorthogonal chemistry provides an exciting new strategy to visualize protein expression, track protein localization, measure protein activity, and identify protein interaction partners in living systems.[1] Two steps are typically involved in this approach: 1) the incorporation of a bioorthogonal group into a protein through either a biochemical pathway or semisynthesis; 2) a site-specific reaction between the protein that carries the bioorthogonal group and a cognate small-molecule probe. Although a plethora of methods have been developed to address the first step, such as non-sense suppression mutagenesis, [2] expressed protein ligation, [3] metabolic engineering, [4] and tagging-via-substrate, [5] only a small number of bioorthogonal reactions are known for the second step. These site-specific reactions include the acid-catalyzed nucleophilic addition of hydrazine to a ketone or aldehyde, [6] Staudinger ligation, [7] Cu I -catalyzed azide-alkyne 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition (click chemistry), [8] strain-promoted azide-alkyne 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition, [9] and the oxidative coupling of aniline.[10] To fully realize the potential of bioorthogonal chemistry in probing protein function, there is an urgent need for the discovery of additional bioorthogonal reactions with robust reaction attributes. Herein, we report a bioorthogonal, photoinducible 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition reaction that allows rapid and highly selective modification of proteins carrying a diaryl tetrazole group in biological media.Forty years ago, Huisgen and co-workers reported a photoactivated 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition reaction between 2,5-diphenyltetrazole and methyl crotonate.[11] A concerted reaction mechanism was proposed, whereby the diaryl tetrazole undergoes a facile cycloreversion reaction upon photoirradiation to release N 2 and generate in situ a nitrile imine dipole, which cyclizes spontaneously with an alkene dipolarophile to afford a pyrazoline cycloadduct (Scheme 1). The photolysis of diaryl tetrazoles was found to be extremely efficient upon UV irradiation at 290 nm, with quantum yields in the range 0.5-0.9.[12] Despite its robust mechanism, this photoactivated reaction has seen very few applications in the past four decades.[13]In our initial studies, we identified an extremely mild photoactivation procedure in the use of a hand-held UV lamp from UVP (UVM-57, 302 nm, 115 V, 0.16 amps). Under these mild conditions, the solvent compatibility, functional-group tolerance, regioselectivity, and yield of the photoactivated 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition reaction were excellent. [14] We then examined the reaction kinetics by incubating a tetrazole peptide with acrylamide in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) at pH 7.5 under UV light (302 nm; see Figure S1 in the Supporting Information). We found that the photolysis of the tetrazole peptide to generate the nitrile imine intermediate was extremely rapid, with a first-order rate constant k 1 = 0.14 s À1 ; the subsequent cycloaddition with the dipolarophile acrylamide proceeded very efficiently, w...

Bioorthogonal reactions suitable for functionalization of genetically or metabolically encoded alkynes, e.g., copper-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition reaction (“click chemistry”), have provided chemical tools to study biomolecular dynamics and function in living systems. Despite its prominence in organic synthesis, copper-free Sonogashira cross-coupling reaction suitable for biological applications has not been reported. In this work, we report the discovery of a robust aminopyrimidine-palladium(II) complex for copper-free Sonogashira cross-coupling that enables selective functionalization of a homopropargylglycine (HPG)-encoded ubiquitin protein in aqueous medium. A wide range of aromatic groups including fluorophores and fluorinated aromatic compounds can be readily introduced into the HPG-containing ubiquitin under mild conditions with good to excellent yields. The suitability of this reaction for functionalization of HPG-encoded ubiquitin in E. coli was also demonstrated. The high efficiency of this new catalytic system should greatly enhance the utility of Sonogashira cross-coupling in bioorthogonal chemistry.

We report a tetrazole-based, photoclick chemistry that can be employed to selectively functionalize an alkene genetically encoded in a protein inside E. coli cells. The reaction involved the treatment of E. coli cells with cell-permeable tetrazoles followed by a brief photo irradiation at 302 nm (4 min) and an overnight incubation at 4 degrees C. This in vivo alkene functionalization procedure was simple, straightforward, and nontoxic to E. coli cells. Additionally, fluorescent adducts were formed, facilitating the monitoring of the reaction in vivo. This reaction should offer a new tool for the study of alkene-containing proteins in living systems.

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