From creating versatile devices to raised medicines, the artwork of bending crystals is reshaping expertise and well being, and on the College of Houston a crystals knowledgeable makes it look virtually like a magic trick.
Jeffrey Rimer, Abraham E. Dukler Professor of Chemical Power, has proven bend and twist crystals with out bodily pressure — no touching, poking or prodding and no warmth or radiation, situations sometimes required to attain reshaping.
As an alternative, he’s utilizing a molecule referred to as a tautomer, which is doing all of the work, inducing bending and twisting of biogenic crystals.
On the planet of crystals, tautomers are shifty characters — molecules with the flexibility to shift their atoms round. Unexpectedly a hydrogen atom could be in a single place, then hop to a different, whereas different atoms slip round.
One of many pharmaceutical purposes the place this will probably be of potential significance is in drug supply, the place roughly 30 of the highest 200 medicine are tautomers.
“Right here, we current a singular case of pure bending with out the applying of exterior forces,” experiences Rimer within the journal PNAS.
Rimer’s work was carried out at The Welch Middle for Superior Bioactive Supplies Crystallization at UH.
“This can be a mechanistic investigation exhibiting how tautomerism induces managed, pure bending and twisting by advantage of the minor tautomer, which is a progress modifier that causes defects within the crystal construction (e.g., twins, screw and edge dislocations), resulting in macroscopic results on materials properties,” mentioned Rimer.
The significance of management
Understanding and exploiting materials flexibility by phenomena corresponding to bending and twisting molecular crystals has been a topic of elevated curiosity due to the variety of purposes that profit from these properties, like optoelectronics, mushy robotics, good sensors and prescription drugs.
“We’ve got proven that bending results in bodily deformations that impression dissolution, which may impression pharmacokinetics within the supply of energetic pharmaceutical elements,” mentioned Rimer.
Within the work, the Rimer workforce confirmed that the diploma of curvature may be tailor-made primarily based on the even handed collection of progress situations. A mixture of state-of-the-art microscopy and spectroscopy methods have been used to characterize the origin of bending.
“Our findings present a better understanding of the defects generated throughout pathological crystallization of a tautomeric materials and the way this phenomenon can result in distinctive bent, twisted, and dendritic morphologies noticed in each organic and artificial supplies,” mentioned Rimer. “The power to selectively management this conduct opens broad avenues for crystal engineering.”
Rimer’s colleagues on this venture are Weiwei Tang and Francisco Robles Hernandez, College of Houston; Tamin Yang, Stockhom College; Qing Tu, Texas A&M College; Hector Calderone, Instituto Politecnico Nacional in Mexico; and a workforce of researchers from Molecular Vista Inc.
Reference: Tang W, Yang T, Tu Q, et al. Tautomerism induces bending and twisting of biogenic crystals. PNAS. 2025;122(30):e2426814122. doi:10.1073/pnas.2426814122
This text has been republished from the next materials. Observe: materials could have been edited for size and content material. For additional info, please contact the cited supply. Our press launch publishing coverage may be accessed here.
