4. Conclusion/perspective
The ability to functionalize biological and bio-inspired materials is critical to expanding the overall utility of well known materials, such as peptides and polypeptides. The use of thiol-X chemistry should continue to be critical to this goal because of its biology friendly, facile, and simple methodology. Continuing work should include raising the yield and extent of functionalization for more complicated substrates (long chain sugars and peptides) and thiol-yne reactions. Simplification of monomer synthesis and purification of NCAs are critical areas of need, as these are the highest barriers to the commercialization and general use of these materials. Future applications should likely expand to unique materials, such as stimuli-responsive films, that are biocompatible, biodegradable, and easy to synthesize. The future is indeed very bright for this topic, which will likely continue to become more significant over the next decade.