The Importance of Crystals
X-ray Crystalography, though a major facet of biology and chemistry studies today, emmerged form the study of light and optics, particularly in the area of polarity. The technique stems from the question that arose with the polar optic experiments on crystals. That is, what are crystals/what casue different crystals to form.
�
One of the more important examples of this study comes from Pasteur�s work on polarized leses and the optically active compound amyl alcohol. Amyl alcohol is a byproduct of milk souring and beer brewing. He also used the new compound microcsope to further set his new theory. In a complicated series of experiments, he formed the hypotheisis that yeast fermentation is a process by which the living organism, yeast, produces alcohol. He then linked milk souring to the same type of processes. Another compound produced, lactic acid, was a crystal that was optically active as well, which he believed to be produced from another type of fermentation, and therefore by some type of biological organism. These organisms were shown to be micoroganisms, and the compound they produced could be analized by x-ray chrystalography.
�
In this lies the whole mystery of fermentation. For if the question I have asked be answered by saying, �since brewer�s yeast absorbs oxygen plentifully when the gas is present in the free state, the reason must be that it needs oxygen in order to live, so that it has to take oxygen from the fermentable medium when no free oxygen is present� -- the plant is immediately revealed to be an agent of the decomposition of sugar: at every resperatory movement on the part of its cells, there will be molecules of sugar whose equillibrium is destroyed by subtraction of part of their oxygen (qtd Gale, p269).
�
As Gale explains in the Theory of Sciences, this view was not widly accepted as it was incredibly radical in that it explicity showed that "fermentation requires life." This whole concept lead to practical applications like the Anthrax vaccine (p 143-168, 276).
�
This is where the concept of symmetry comes into play. While symetry had been debated in mathematics before this time, this was a new use of it. In trying to explain the nature of crystals, it is used to group cystals into fundamental forms, which is the basis of modern crystalography theory.
�
Pasture took this idea and used it to analize the organic porductis of fermentation. In doing so, Pasture radically changed bilogy, breinging concepts of chemistry into the picture more than ever before. However, as can be seen from Whelwell, it is not a completely foreign idea to biology enevn then.
All the symmetrical members of a natural product are, under circumstances, alike affected by the natural formative power. The parts when we have termed symmetrical, resemble each other, not only in their form and position, but also in the manner which they are produced and modified by natural causes (Whelwell, p73-75, vol2)
�
Although x-ray chrsytaolography existed in chemistry before Pasture, he truend it toward bilogical reactions, creating a new way of understanding life in terms of what we consider today to be biochemical reactions.