Carolyn Bertozzi, Morten Meldal, and Barry Sharpless - these geniuses have been selected as the recipients of this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry, as decided by The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
This honor was bestowed "for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry." The award is worth 10 million Swedish kronor, approximately $896,000, and will be split between the winners.
Click Chemistry: Making Difficult Processes Easier With High-yielding and Clean Reactions
According to a press release posted on The Nobel Prize webpage, the prestigious award is about simplifying complicated processes.
"This year's Prize in Chemistry deals with not overcomplicating matters, instead working with what is easy and simple. Functional molecules can be built even by taking a straightforward route," said Chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry Johan Åqvist in the statement.
Sharpless and Meldal established a functional kind of chemistry, now known as Click Chemistry. It is described as the molecular building blocks being able to snap together in an effective and speedy manner.
This form of chemistry has entered a new era - thanks to Bertozzi, who has begun applying the technique to species still alive.
Brief Background
For a long time, chemists have been motivated by the urge to construct ever more complex molecules.
In the field of pharmaceutical research, this involved the synthetic recreation of naturally occurring compounds that contain therapeutic qualities. This has resulted in the creation of numerous impressive molecular constructions, however, producing them typically takes time and is quite expensive.
Barry Sharpless - Scripps Research, La Jolla, CA, USA
This is now the second Nobel Prize in Chemistry for Sharpless. He did make a start.
In the year 2000, he came up with the idea of click chemistry. This type of chemistry is straightforward and dependable, in which reactions occur rapidly, and undesired by-products are avoided.
Morten Meldal - University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Soon after the initial conceptualizing of click chemistry, Sharpless and Meldal - independently of each other - revealed what is now considered to be "the crown gem of click chemistry," and that is the copper-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition.
This is a sophisticated chemical process that works quite well and is currently finding wider use. In addition to its many other applications, it is used in the production of medications, the mapping of DNA, and the synthesis of materials that are more suited to their intended function.
Carolyn R. Bertozzi - Stanford University, CA, USA
Click chemistry was elevated to a new level because of Bertozzi's effort.
She devised click reactions that function within living creatures so that she could map glycans, which are important but elusive biomolecules found on the surface of cells. Her bioorthogonal reactions take place without causing any disruption to the cell's normally occurring chemical processes.
These reactions are currently widely utilized worldwide to investigate cellular structures and trace biological activities. Researchers have improved the targeting of cancer pharmaceuticals, and these improvements are now being explored in clinical studies.
The field of chemistry has entered the age of functionalism due to the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal processes. The greatest good for all people will come from this development.
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Written by Trisha Kae Andrada
