Now, I know what you're thinking: Growing crystals are easy. Everybody has made rock candy before. They are so sugary and tasty, and they melt wondrously in the mouth. All you have to do is make a sugar solution and let it crystallize on a string or a stick. Over the next couple of weeks, a supply of candy will spontaneously grow, creating savory rock candy for your taste buds to enjoy.
(Rye -96. Saffron rock candy for tea. Copyright notice. CC BY-SA 4.0. License notice. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. Disclaimer notice. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Rock_candy#/media/File:Saffron_rock_candy.jpg. No changes made.)
Though this perception of crystals is most prevalent amongst students, crystals, however, have much more potential than you may realize. If you tap into its powers correctly, crystals are capable of curing cancer.
Say what?! Yep. You read right: Crystals are capable of curing cancer.
How, you may ask? Well, scientists from various fields are working on medical drugs that treat cancer. Unfortunately healthy cells and cancer cells are very much alike and extremely hard to differentiate; therefore, one treatment may negatively affect both heathy and cancerous cells. For example, chemotherapy targets rapidly multiplying cancer cells, but it also targets other rapidly growing cells such as hair, causing the patient to lose hair. To minimize or prevent these situations, the cancer cells must first be differentiated from healthy cells, and one of the best ways to do so is by looking at their respective nucleic acid sequences and structures, which essentially act like fingerprints for a cell. In order to determine these identifying structures through X-ray or neutron diffraction, these nucleic acids and their protein complexes need to be crystallized first.
(I.C. Baianu et al. "Physical Chemistry of Foods", vol.2, van Nostrand reinhold: New York, 1994. A- and B- DNA X-ray diffraction patterns. Copyright notice. CC BY-SA 3.0. License notice. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en. Disclaimer notice. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ABDNAxrgpj.jpg. No changes made.)
Above is an example of diffraction patterns that can be used for structure determination.
Crystal growth or crystallization is a critical, key step for determining these structures and discovering therapeutics that target and inhibit nucleic acids and their protein complexes in cancer cells. Once the DNA is inhibited, RNA and protein production is discontinued, and the cancer cell dies.
Now think about this through a different perspective:
If there was a burglar escaping on his car, what is an effective way for police to stop him? Slash the tires or shoot the engine, of course. But if the police do not know the structure of the car or the importance of the tires and the engine, the police would not know the most efficient way to stop the car, and the burglar would escape.
It is very similar for cancer cells:
After the DNA structure of cancerous DNA is determined through diffraction patterns of the DNA crystals, scientists will recognize the crucial parts in the cancerous nucleic acids and their protein complexes which will allow scientists to design small, precise molecules that will block significant points to inhibit transcription from DNA to RNA which in turn prevents translation from RNA into vital proteins that the cancer cell needs; therefore, the cancer cell dies.
Now, do you recall the many organelles of a cell? Allow me to refresh your memory: The DNA is in the nucleus of the cell, and RNAs are simply copies of the DNA, and ribosomes use these RNAs to produce proteins that help the cell function.
With this in mind, if the ribosomes in a cell were cooks, how would the cooks get the recipe (the RNA) to make the dishes (the proteins) to supply for the restaurant (the cell) to serve to the customers (the organelles that keep the cell running) who pay the restaurant if there was no scribe (DNA and its protein complex) to transcribe the recipe from the cookbook (DNA) for the cooks or if there was not even a cookbook (DNA) to begin with? It would be impossible. By inhibiting or blocking the cancerous DNA and its protein complex, effective transcription is prevented, and with that step stopped, the cancerous cell can no longer manufacture proteins to sustain itself; thus, the cancer cell dies.
Cancerous DNA and its transcription are extremely important for cancer cells, and scientists investigate how to destroy the cancerous cells by crystallizing its nucleic acids which sheds insight for structure determination of the cancerous DNA and its protein complexes, and that information is necessary to design an inhibitor which will stop protein manufacturing in its earlier stages which would kill the cancerous cell most effectively.
As you can see, structure determination is extremely important when it comes to this approach of treating cancer. Unfortunately, crystal growth can be slow at times, and the crystal growth conditions must be optimized perfectly to maximize the quality of the crystals to obtain more accurate nucleic acid structures.
This is when selenium comes in handy.
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