Applications of azide-based bioorthogonal click chemistry in glycobiology

Click chemistry is a powerful chemical reaction with excellent bioorthogonality features: biocompatible, rapid and highly specific in biological environments. For glycobiology, bioorthogonal click chemistry has created a new method for glycan non-invasive imaging in living systems, selective metabolic engineering, and offered an elite chemical handle for biological manipulation and glycomics studies. Especially the [3 + 2] dipolar cycloadditions of azides with strained alkynes and the Staudinger ligation of azides and triarylphosphines have been widely used among the extant click reactions. This review focuses on the azide-based bioorthogonal click chemistry, describing the characteristics and development of these reactions, introducing some recent applications in glycobiology research, especially in glycan metabolic engineering, including glycan non-invasive imaging, glycomics studies and viral surface manipulation for drug discovery as well as other applications like activity-based protein profiling and carbohydrate microarrays.