It seems two professors, Professors Bauke Dijkstra and Lubbert Dijkhuizen have “deciphered the structure and functional mechanism of the glucansucrase enzyme that is responsible for dental plaque sticking to teeth.”

The enzyme in question is called Glucansucrase and by using protein crystallography, the researchers were able to elucidate the three dimensional (3D) structure of the enzyme.

What is Glucansucrase

Glucansucrase is defined as the following:

Glucansucrase is an enzyme used by bacteria in human mouths such as Streptococcus mutans and Lactobacillus reuteri to produce long sticky biofilm chains to stick to teeth and cause tooth decay. However, the former is considered a worst offender and the latter an indicator of healthy mouth flora. The enzyme both splits sucrose into glucose and fructose as well as building the glucose chain. There is hope to make dental caries a thing of the past by knocking out this enzyme.^[1]

Whats the future of tooth decay?

It’s not too bright! It looks like there’s a possibility that future dental and oral products could have an ingredient within them that tackles the functional mechanism of the glucansucrase and quite possibly make tooth decay a thing of the past!