Chemists Uncover Powerful New Click Chemistry Reactivity | Hacker News Reader

Chemists Uncover Powerful New Click Chemistry Reactivity

scripps.edu

24 pointsandrewl9 comments

Pretty breathless PR piece from Scripps that actually doesn't go into any notable detail on the chemical reaction, hits all the buzzwords (green, click, yada yada) and manages to spell sulfur "sulfer" and hydrolyze "hydrolize". (Here's an actually awesome recent piece of Scripps science)[http://openflask.blogspot.com/2013/08/ingenol-behind-scenes....].

Click chemistry despite its cool sounding name isn't very useful because the clickable parts that are left behind in the final structure are not necessarily themselves useful for other things..m in biology this can often mean "they get in the way" except for a subset of problems like payload attachment or imaging agent/analytical agent attachment. Mostly click chemistry gets used to make other biological discovery marginally easier.

With that said, i Just read the Lowe review and I think the polymer application is exciting.

Bioconjugation is an important niche! :-)

Time will tell. Major downside of the CuAAC click reaction is using azides, which are hella dangerous.

Alkyl azides are not very dangerous.

Derek Lowe covered this here:

http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2014/08/13/sulfates_and...

I was in Professor Sharpless' organic synthesis class at Scripps many many years ago. Very nice guy and extremely bright. I'm not surprised he's pushing the envelope again.

Yeah, Professor Sharpless. I took Organic II from him, he was indeed "very nice and extremely bright" (I had no doubt he'd get a Nobel in due course, as he did), and I too am not surprised. Here's Wikipedia on Click chemistry, which says he coined the phrase: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_chemistry

Anecdote: he dipped some absorbent paper in safrole and had us pass them around and smell them, and in the middle of this said something to the effect, "Oh, BTW, this is officially carcinogenic, but it's not truly dangerous, I wouldn't have you smelling it if it was". As a former fan of root beer before the FDA forced it's removal I appreciated that. As the son of a Cajun mother I'm really glad filé powder contains doesn't contain it, banning it would be even more criminal.

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