Immobilization strategies for small molecule, peptide and protein microarrays

Protein, peptide and small molecule microarrays are valuable tools in biological research. In the last decade, substantial progress has been achieved to make these powerful technologies more reliable and available for researchers. This review describes chemical preparation methods for these microarrays with focus on site-selective and bioorthogonal immobilization reactions, particularly the Staudinger ligation and the thiol-ene reaction. In addition, the application of peptide microarrays, which were prepared by Staudinger ligation, to substrate specificity mapping is illustrated.