Acrolein (Acr), a highly reactive unsaturated aldehyde, can cause various lung diseases including asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and lung cancer. We have found that Acr can damage not only genomic DNA but also DNA repair proteins causing repair dysfunction and enhancing cells' mutational susceptibility. While these effects may account for Acr lung carcinogenicity, the mec...

It has been postulated that ionizing radiation produces a unique form of cellular DNA damage called "clustered damages" or "multiply damaged sites". Here, we show that clustered DNA damages are indeed formed in Escherichia coli by ionizing radiation and are converted to lethal double-strand breaks during attempted base-excision repair. In wild-type cells possessing the oxidative DNA glycosylase...

Radiation can damage cellular components, including DNA. Organisms have developed a panoply of means of dealing with DNA damage. Some repair paths have rather narrow substrate specificity (e.g. photolyases, which act on specific pyrimidine photoproducts in a specific type (e.g., DNA) and conformation (double-stranded B conformation) of nucleic acid. Others, for example, nucleotide excisio~ repa...

The study of DNA lesions and changes, produced by interaction with UV or ionizing radiation and by the effects of oxidative stress, is a multidisciplinary research field in life sciences that has yelded exciting discoveries in the last few decades. The importance of this study is clearly enhanced by its strong societal impact, because of the connections of DNA lesions with carcinogenetic proces...

Cells encounter up to 10 6 DNA damages per day, which can be induced by exogenous physical agents, spontaneous chemical reactions , and products of endogenous metabolism. 1 To cope with these threats, the DNA damage response (DDR) system is employed to detect and repair these damages. if massive DNA damages occur within cells which cannot be repaired properly or promptly, the DDR will cause apo...

DNA-damaging agents can induce clustered lesions or multiply damaged sites (MDSs) on the same or opposing DNA strands. In the latter, attempts to repair MDS can generate closely opposed single-strand break intermediates that may convert non-lethal or mutagenic base damage into double-strand breaks (DSBs). We constructed a diploid S. cerevisiae yeast strain with a chromosomal context targeted by...

Introduction: Along with the increased use of cardiac imaging at clinics there is increased attention to the potential risks related to the methods used like magnetic resonance (MR) and it cannot be ruled out that MR can alter DNA structure. The aim of this review is to assess the impact of routine cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) scanning on DNA damages in human T lymphocytes....

The hydroxyl radicals are known to be a biologically active oxygen species. A remarkable enhancement of hydroxyl radical generation was observed in the mitochondria obtained from ischemic myocardium. The hydroxyl radicals are the primary reactive species leading to cellular damages, such as membrane damages, DNA damages, enzyme inactivation, protein denaturation and so forth. The origin of the ...