Molecular conjugation refers to methods used in biomedicine, advanced materials and nanotechnology to link two partners — from small molecules to large and sometimes functionally complex biopolymers. The methods ideally have a broad structural scope, proceed under very mild conditions (including in H₂O), occur at a rapid rate and in quantitative yield with no by-products, enable bioorthogonal reactivity and have zero toxicity. Over the past two decades, the field of click chemistry has emerged to afford us new and efficient methods of molecular conjugation. These methods are based on chemical reactions that produce permanently linked conjugates, and we refer to this field here as covalent click chemistry. Alternatively, if molecular conjugation is undertaken using a pair of complementary molecular recognition partners that associate strongly and selectively to form a thermodynamically stable non-covalent complex, then we refer to this strategy as non-covalent click chemistry. This Perspective is concerned with this latter approach and highlights two distinct applications of non-covalent click chemistry in molecular conjugation: the pre-assembly of molecular conjugates or surface-coated nanoparticles and the in situ capture of tagged biomolecular targets for imaging or analysis.

分子缀合是指在生物医学，先进材料和纳米技术中用于连接两个伙伴的方法-从小分子到大分子，有时甚至是功能复杂的生物聚合物。该方法理想地具有宽广的结构范围，可在非常温和的条件下（包括在H _{2中）进行}O），快速且定量收率，无副产物，可实现生物正交反应，且毒性为零。在过去的二十年中，点击化学领域的出现为我们提供了新的有效的分子偶联方法。这些方法基于产生永久连接的偶联物的化学反应，在此我们将这一领域称为共价点击化学。或者，如果使用一对互补的分子识别配偶进行分子共轭，它们会选择性地强烈结合，形成热力学稳定的非共价复合物，那么我们将此策略称为非共价点击化学。此“观点”与后一种方法有关，并强调了非共价点击化学在分子偶联中的两种不同应用：