Today, the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Carolyn R. Bertozzi, Morten Meldal, and K. Barry Sharpless for "developing click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry".
Nobel Prize official website shows that the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry is about the process of "simplifying difficulties". Carl Barry Sharples and Morton Meldal laid the foundation for the functional form of chemistry, click chemistry. In this chemistry, molecular building blocks are fast and efficiently combined. Caroline Ruth Bertosi brings click chemistry into a new dimension and begins applying it to organisms.
For a long time, chemists have been eager to build increasingly complex molecules. In pharmaceutical research, this usually involves artificial reconstruction of natural molecules with medicinal properties. This creates many amazing molecular structures, but these are usually time-consuming and costly to produce.
, Chairman of the Nobel Committee on Chemistry John Kvester, said: "This year's Chemistry Prize deals with not overly complex problems, but simple problems. Even a simple approach can be used to build functional molecules."
Karl Barry Sharples won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry twice. Screenshot of the Nobel Prize official website
Karl Barry Sharples, this time he won his second Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Around 2000, he proposed the concept of click chemistry, a simple and reliable form of chemistry that reacts quickly and avoids unnecessary by-products.
Not long after, Morton Meldal and Karl Barry Shaples independently introduced the Crown Gem of Click Chemistry: Copper catalyzed azide alkyne cycloaddition reaction. This is an elegant and efficient chemical reaction that is currently widely used. In many other uses, it is used for drug development, mapping DNA and creating materials that better meet demand.
Caroline Ruth Bertosi takes click chemistry to the next level. To map important but elusive biomolecules, glycan , on the cell surface, she developed a click response that works in the organisms. Her bioorthogonal reactions do not destroy the normal chemical reactions of cells.
(Source: China Youth Daily )
