‘Click’ chemistry snaps 2022 Nobel

This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to three laureates who collectively made synthesizing complex molecules much easier.

Barry Sharpless, who is now a two-time Chemistry Nobel Prize laureate (2001 & 2022), pioneered the field of click chemistry which provides fast and efficient methods of “snapping” together molecular building blocks to provide highly-complex molecules.

Morten Meldal, and Barry Sharpless, independently introduced the copper-catalyzed azide-alkyne cycloaddition reaction, now con- sidered to be the crown jewel of click chemistry. an experiment which violated Bell’s inequality. Aspect improved on this experiment by guaranteeing that the initial conditions will not affect the measurements in the experiment.

Meanwhile, Carolyn Bertozzi developed and applied these click chemistry reactions to biology, in which she developed bioorthogonal reactions to map glycans on cell surfaces without disrupting their chemistry.

The work of these laureates has revolutionized pharmaceutical research, including how we track biological processes and improve the targeting of cancer medication.

Zeilinger used entangled quantum states to demonstrate quantum teleportation, which demonstrates the ability to transfer the quantum state of one entangled particle to another.

Clauser, Aspect, and Zeilinger’s contributions to the field of quantum mechanics provide developments towards the use of quantum entanglement in technology, which potentially reduces computing time and power for transferring information.