In 2022 Carolyn Bertozzi shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Barry Sharpless and Morten Meldal for discovery of click chemistry. Bertozzi invented a biorthogonal variation of Sharpless and Meldal reactions. In this paper the authors described a novel way of manipulating the click chemistry reaction, which includes a ligation reaction modeled after the Staudinger reaction that forms two reactive partners which are abiotic and chemically orthogonal to native cellular components. In essence this transformation permitted its execution within the cell’s interior, offering new ways to investigate and follow intracellular interactions. This reaction contributed to more targeted cancer treatments and other pharmaceutical applications.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)