Your DNA is in constant flux. It folds, copies, transcribes genes, refolds, and is mutated constantly. Part of the ability to be dynamic allows for changes, sometimes these are good, sometimes these are bad. Changes are caused by many damaging effect like UV or chemical exposure. For the most part DNA fixes itself. It has many different repair mechanisms that interact with the bases to determine if they are right or wrong. Researchers have found a repair mechanism that doesn't interact with the base pairs.
We know that a family of repair proteins called glycosylases that flip incorrect bases outside the helix and replace them with the new correct base. These alkD repair mechanisms interact with only the backbone and locate positively charged bases caused by alklyation. They remove these bases and fix them. Since it locates problems based on charge it can do a much bigger area and more types of damage than the other types of glycosylases.
This finding just constantly shows that we do not yet know all there is to know about our DNA repair systems. Finding these new mechanisms could lead to future work in DNA repair therapies. We could learn how to understand these mechanisms and learn how to manipulate them for treatments.
Here's the link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151029190840.htm
I agree that there is just so much more to be learned about DNA repair mechanisms. If they are just now discovering a new one, who knows how many other ones may exist?
ReplyDeleteI agree there is so much we don't know, there is also stuff we think we know but will soon find out we were wrong but that's science!
ReplyDeleteI agree there is so much we don't know, there is also stuff we think we know but will soon find out we were wrong but that's science!
ReplyDeleteShows you how uninformed I am about biology (I was a chem major in undergrad). I didn't even know DNA repair was a thing.
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