Cavities Become a Thing of the Past

Ever feel like brushing your teeth doesn't do quite enough to keep your mouth clean? Dutch Researchers may have found a way to keep plaque from ever being able to even start building up on your teeth. Scientiest and Bioengineers alike have brainstormed thousands of ways and put countless amount of money into getting rid of the plaque in our heart (including us!) - but the plaque in our mouth seems to have been a simpler fix.
The culprit for a dirty mouth? An enzyme named Glucansucrase. This enzyme takes the sugars that we chew and changes them into extremely long sugar chains that adhere to our teeth like glue. You would think it would be easy to inhibit such an enzyme but the problem is that it is extremely similar to the enzymes found in our saliva that are meant to break down our foods. This enzyme, amalyse, is pivotal to the proper function of our saliva in the digestive system. However, researchers at the University of Groningen have successfully crystallized the enzyme glucansucrase using protein crystallography. Knowing the 3-D structure allowed the researchers to analyze how the protein folded - which was extremely different as to how the researchers thought it would be. This unique method of folding allows the researchers to create an inhibitor to "target the folding structure directly", thus not affecting the critical amalyse enzyme.

I found this article extremely interesting because of our nanorobot project and a general dislike for all plaques. It was interesting to me that the plaque in the mouth could be inhibited while the plaque in our hearts is so much more a pertinent problem and spent so much more research money on, yet we have no cure yet. Still, this is a large breakthrough in medical (more specifically dental) science.

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-12/figuring-out-tooth-decay-mechanism-researchers-could-eradicate-cavities-plaque-inhibitor