text: A ketone or aldehyde can be attached to a protein through the oxidation of N-terminal serine residues or transamination with PLP. Additionally, they can be introduced by incorporating unnatural amino acids via the Tirrell method or Schultz method. They will then selectively condense with an alkoxyamine and a hydrazine, producing oxime and hydrazone derivatives (shown in the first and second reactions, respectively, in Figure 6). This reaction is highly chemoselective in terms of protein bioconjugation, but the reaction rate is slow. The mechanistic studies show that the rate determining step is the dehydration of tetrahedral intermediate, so a mild acidic solution is often employed to accelerate the dehydration step.  
  The introduction of nucleophilic catalyst can significantly enhance reaction rate (shown in Figure 7). For example, using aniline as a nucleophilic catalyst, a less populated protonated carbonyl becomes a highly populated protonated Schiff base. In other words, it generates a high concentration of reactive electrophile. The oxime ligation can then occur readily, and it has been reported that the rate increased up to 400 times under mild acidic condition. The key of this catalyst is that it can generate a reactive electrophile without competing with desired product.
  Recent developments that exploit proximal functional groups have enabled hydrazone condensations to operate at 20 Ms at neutral pH while oxime condensations have been discovered which proceed at 500-10000 Ms at neutral pH without added catalysts.