Acta Chim. Sinica ›› 2015, Vol. 73 ›› Issue (8): 783-792.DOI: 10.6023/A15030214 Previous Articles     Next Articles

Review

生物正交标记反应研究进展

杨麦云, 陈鹏   

  1. 北京大学化学生物学系 北大-清华生命科学联合中心 北京 100871
  • 投稿日期:2015-03-29 发布日期:2015-06-29
  • 通讯作者: 陈鹏 E-mail:pengchen@pku.edu.cn
  • 基金资助:

    项目受国家自然科学基金委重大研究计划培育(Nos. 21225206, 91313301)资助.

Progress in the Bioorthogonal Labeling Reactions

Yang Maiyun, Chen Peng R.   

  1. Department of Chemical Biology, Peking University, Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life sciences, Beijing 100871
  • Received:2015-03-29 Published:2015-06-29
  • Supported by:

    Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 21225206, 91313301).

Selective labeling of biomolecules inside living cells is a challenging task, which requires the reaction to proceed efficiently and selectively under physiological condition without interfering with active species presented in the living systems. Bioorthogonal reactions, which were developed in the past decade, successfully meet these requirements and their applications in biomolecule labeling have expanded our understanding of cellular process. Considerable attention has been focused on the optimization of a few known bioorthogonal reactions, including discovery of new ligands and privileged substrates for transition metal catalyzed reactions, and the use of strain promoted functional group for substrate activation in the cycloaddition reactions. In addition, new bioorthogonal reactions, including the fluorogenic reactions, have also been emerged in the past few years. Progress has also been made toward the development of mutually exclusive bioorthogonal reactions and their application for multiple labeling of biomolecules inside living cells. Here we review the most widely used bioorthogonal labeling reactions, drawing particular attention to those that have been used in living systems. We focused on the selective labeling of target proteins by means of site-specific introduction of a functional group followed by the bioorthogonal reaction with a complementary functional group. We categorized these reactions into three different groups based on the catalysts used in the reactions: metal catalyzed reactions, photo induced reactions and reactions without catalyst. The biological applications of these bioorthogonal reactions have also been briefly introduced. We also listed the rate constants and main references of these reactions to facilitate researchers for choosing the appropriate one. Lastly, we highlight ongoing challenges in developing new bioorthogonal reactions and their application to study complex biological systems.

Key words: bioorthogonal reaction, living cells, protein labeling, site-specific, unnatural amino acid