Chemical reporters for biological discovery

Functional tools are needed to understand complex biological systems. Here we review how chemical reporters in conjunction with bioorthogonal labeling methods can be used to image and

retrieve nucleic acids, proteins, glycans, lipids and other metabolites in vitro, in cells as well as in whole organisms. By tagging these biomolecules, researchers can now monitor their

dynamics in living systems and discover specific substrates of cellular pathways. These advances in chemical biology are thus providing important tools to characterize biological pathways

and are poised to facilitate our understanding of human diseases.

In the version of this Review Article initially published, a double bond was missing from the chemical structure of the cyclooctene on the left side of the reaction arrow in Figure 1e. The

chemical structure has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

Prescher, J.A. & Bertozzi, C.R. Chemistry in living systems. Nat. Chem. Biol. 1, 13–21 (2005).

We thank K. Rangan and N. Westcott for helpful comments on the manuscript. H.C.H. acknowledges support from Ellison Medical Foundation and US National Institutes of Health–National Institute

of General Medical Sciences (1R01GM087544).

Laboratory of Chemical Biology and Microbial Pathogenesis, The Rockefeller University, New York, New York, USA

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