Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, School of Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China.
The Key Lab of Health Chemistry and Molecular Diagnosis of Suzhou, College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Soochow University, Suzhou, Jiangsu, China.
Luminescence. 2024 Jan;39(1):e4619. doi: 10.1002/bio.4619. Epub 2023 Nov 21.
In 2002, two transformative research paradigms emerged: 'click chemistry' and 'aggregation-induced emission (AIE),' both leaving significant impacts on early 21st-century academia. Click chemistry, which describes the straightforward and reliable reactions for linking two building blocks, has simplified complex molecular syntheses and functionalization, propelling advancements in polymer, material, and life science. In particular, nontoxic, metal-free click reactions involving abiotic functional groups have matured into bioorthogonal reactions. These are organic ligations capable of selective and efficient operations even in congested living systems, therefore enabling in vitro to in vivo biomolecular labelling. Concurrently, AIE, a fluorogenic phenomenon of twisted π-conjugated compounds upon aggregation, has offered profound insight into solid-state photophysics and promoted the creation of aggregate materials. The inherent fluorogenicity and aggregate-emission properties of AIE luminogens have found extensive application in biological imaging, characterized by their high-contrast and photostable fluorescent signals. As such, the convergence of these two domains to yield efficient labelling with excellent fluorescence images is an anticipated progression in recent life science research. In this review, we intend to showcase the synergetic applications of AIE probes and metal-free click or bioorthogonal reactions, highlighting both the achievements and the unexplored avenues in this promising field.
2002 年，两种具有变革性的研究范式出现了：“点击化学”和“聚集诱导发光（AIE）”，这两者都对 21 世纪初的学术界产生了重大影响。点击化学描述了连接两个构建块的简单可靠的反应，简化了复杂的分子合成和功能化，推动了聚合物、材料和生命科学的发展。特别是涉及非生物官能团的无毒、无金属点击反应已经成熟为生物正交反应。这些是有机连接，即使在拥挤的生命系统中也能进行选择性和高效的操作，因此能够在体外对生物分子进行标记。同时，聚集时扭曲的π共轭化合物的荧光现象 AIE，为固态光物理提供了深刻的见解，并促进了聚集材料的创造。AIE 发光团的固有荧光性和聚集发射特性在生物成像中得到了广泛的应用，其特点是具有高对比度和光稳定的荧光信号。因此，这两个领域的融合，以产生具有优异荧光图像的高效标记，是最近生命科学研究中的一个预期进展。在这篇综述中，我们旨在展示 AIE 探针和无金属点击或生物正交反应的协同应用，突出这一有前途的领域中的成就和尚未探索的途径。
