1120 - 1200 Carolyn R Bertozzi

Bioorthogonal Chemistry - Biologically Driven Synthetic Methodology 

The compendium of organic transformations assumes that environmental conditions (eg, solvent, atmosphere) can be precisely controlled and competing functional groups protected. There is growing interest, however, in performing chemical reactions in environments rich in unprotected functionality and comprising heterogeneous locales of varying solvation properties. Living systems epitomize such uncontrolled environments and also impose the further requirement that chemical reagents lack toxicity. We use the term "bioorthogonal" to describe reagents and reactions that do not interfere or interact with biological systems. This presentation will focus on recent work from my laboratory toward the development of bioorthogonal reactions and their applications in in vivo imaging of cell surface glycans and protein engineering.