[AntonioLao]

As part of biochemistry, the medical field of gene therapy is becoming more and more realizable through the study of heterogeneous polymers (organic plus inorganic). However, in general, what is biochemistry and in particular what is gene therapy.

Biochemistry is the study of biology at the molecular level (distances between 0.5 to 8 nanometers that are within the detectability using electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR). The dominant forces at this level are intermolecular forces such as van der Waals, electrostatic, hydrogen bonding force and other not quite clearly defined forces: Boltzmann’s inverse fifth power and Einstein’s unpublished capillarity potential, p=p¥ - c’cf(r) where c and c’ are constants characteristic of two molecules, and f(r) is a universal function of the distance between them. Nevertheless, scientists have already made many discoveries, since tartaric acid was discovered by Louis Pasteur, that there are complex chains of molecular structure that are readily synthesized. They called them monomers. Furthermore, these monomers can form even longer chains now classified as polymers. Moreover, polymers can be formed from different monomers. At the start, polymers were thought to be just organic molecules. Later, biochemists realized that they can also come from inorganic monomers, that is to say a molecular structure where the carbon atom is practically missing.

In fact, it is now known, that one of the best example of a natural heterogeneous polymer is the DNA molecule of life. Its structure is very appropriately named the double helix for reasons which can be easily explained by a biochemist or by the discoverers: Watson and Crick – winners of 1962 Nobel Prize in Medicine.

The different monomers for a DNA would then be the sugar molecules (organic) and the salt backbones (inorganic). Although for scaffoldings, the sugars must be alternately attached to the salt backbones, only sugars can attach to sugars. There are only 4 plus 1 basic sugar monomers. These are (1) adenine (2) cytosine (3) guanine (4) thymine for synthesizing DNA’s and (5) uracil replacing thymine for synthesizing RNA’s.

It is now believed by certain minority of medical researchers that genetic causes of diseases are more fundamental toward finding a cure than those causes derived from the environment and living lifestyles. The next step would be finding means to remove or replace these disease causing genetic defects as an emergence for gene therapy.