Since the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2022, click chemistry is on everyone’s lips. The idea behind it is that chemical reactions should be as easy as clicking two Lego pieces together. This requires reactions that are modular, “spring-loaded” in reactivity and reach high yields while being insensitive to solvent parameters as well as oxygen and water. Click chemistry is a very powerful tool to overcome challenges in synthetic chemistry.

Furthermore, click-chemistry found a wide range of applications in biology with the development of biorthogonal click-reactions using strained alkynes and azides, which do not occur naturally, are non-toxic and can thus be performed in living cells to track biomolecules.

In this presentation, I will explain the concept of click chemistry and its many faces and then focus on its application in biology. Finally, I will show how click chemistry can be used to study lipids and biological membranes.