Recent Development of Photo-Cross-Linkers as Tools for Biomedical Research.

Photo-cross-linkers are invaluable tools for identifying drug targets and off-targets as well as probing the binding sites in medicinal chemistry and chemical biology. In this review, we summarize recent development of the ligand-based and genetically encoded photo-cross-linkers and their use in biological system. In particular, we highlight our discovery of 2-aryl-5-carboxytetrazole (ACT) as a novel class of photo-cross-linkers and their successful applications in drug target identification as well as identifying transient protein-protein interaction complexes in mammalian cells.