Click chemistry is a chemical paradigm introduced by K. Barry Sharpless in 2001 [10] and describes chemical reactions that generate substances quickly, reliably and in quantitative yield by joining small building blocks under mild conditions. This is inspired by the fact that chemical reactions in nature also generate substances by joining small modular units.
Advantages of click chemistry labeling:
| ![]() |
Alkyne-containing Reagents for Cu(I)-catalyzed Click Reactions
One of the most popular reactions within the click chemistry paradigm is the Cu(I)-catalyzed 1,3-dipolar Huisgen cycloaddition of alkynes and azides, using a Copper (Cu) catalyst at room temperature. This reaction proceeds with great efficiency and selectivity in aqueous media and yields a triazole moiety.
DBCO-containing Reagents for Copper-free Click Reactions
The strain-promoted or Cu(I)-free [2+3] cycloaddition strategy relies on the use of strained cyclooctynes. Their use decreases the activation energy for the cycloaddition click reaction, enabling it to be carried out without the need for catalysis at low temperatures with an efficiency greater than that of the Cu(I)-catalyzed ligation.
The strain-promoted Click reaction and the so called Staudinger ligation (phosphine-azide) are competing technologies for chemoselective ligation. Both reactions are chemoselective and do not require copper, so both do not damage biomolecules. However, the rate of Staudinger ligation is about 100fold lower than the rate of the DBCO cycloaddition, which makes the Staudinger ligation hardly useful for studying dynamic biological systems. Only in cases where the speed of ligation is irrelevant, both reactions can be used with about equal efficiency.

