Cross-link

Common card · No. 380006

In chemistry and biology, a cross-link is a bond or a short sequence of bonds that links one polymer chain to another. These links may take the form of covalent bonds or ionic bonds and the polymers can be either synthetic polymers or natural polymers (such as proteins). IUPAC's preferred term for this is crosslink without the hyphen, and is defined as a region from which at least 4 chains emanate. In polymer chemistry cross-linking usually refers to the use of cross-links to promote a change in the polymers' physical properties. When crosslinking is used in the biological field, it refers to the use of a probe to link proteins together to check for protein–protein interactions, as well as other creative cross-linking methodologies. Although the term is used to refer to the "linking of polymer chains" for both sciences, the extent of crosslinking and specificities of the crosslinking agents vary greatly.

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