It just says click – and the molecules are coupled together

Chemistry is mainly about putting molecules together and pulling them apart. One such reaction in which snapping the building blocks of large molecules together regardless of the chemical properties of those smaller units is click chemistry. These reactions are fast, simple, versatile, and give high product yields.

This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry deals with such simple reactions and its bio-orthogonality. Two of the three winners, Morten Meldal of the University of Copenhagen and Barry Sharpless of Scripps Research, in La Jolla, California, laid the foundation for a functional form of chemistry in which molecular building blocks snap together quickly and efficiently whereas the third scientist, Carolyn Bertozzi of Stanford University, adapted it for use in biological systems.