Repair of damaged DNA in vivo: Final technical report
This contract was initiated in 1962 with the US Atomic Energy Commission to carry out basic research on the effects of radiation on the process of DNA replication in bacteria. Within the first contract year we discovered repair replication at the same time that Setlow and Carrier discovered pyrimidine dimer excision. These discoveries led to the elucidation of the process of excision-repair, one of the most important mechanisms by which living systems, including humans, respond to structural damage in their genetic material. We improved methodology for distinguishing repair replication from semiconservative replication and instructed others in these techniques. Painter then was the first to demonstrate repair replication in ultraviolet irradiated human cells. He, in turn, instructed James Cleaver who discovered that skin fibroblasts from patients with xeroderma pigmentosum were defective in excision-repair. People with this genetic defect are extremely sensitive to sunlight and they develop carcinomas and melanomas of the skin with high frequency. The existence of this hereditary disease attests to the importance of DNA repair in man. We certainly could not survive in the normal ultraviolet flux from the sun if our DNA were not continuously monitored for damage and repaired. Other hereditary diseases such as ataxia telangiectasia, Cockayne's syndrome, Blooms syndrome and Fanconi's anemia also involve deficiencies in DNA damage processing. The field of DNA repair has developed rapidly as we have learned that most environmental chemical carcinogens as well as radiation produce repairable damage in DNA. 251 refs.
- Research Organization:
- Stanford Univ., CA (USA). Dept. of Biological Sciences
- DOE Contract Number:
- AS03-76EV70007
- OSTI ID:
- 5715876
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/EV/70007-T2; ON: DE88001622
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
DNA REPAIR
HISTORICAL ASPECTS
BACTERIA
MAMMALS
RESEARCH PROGRAMS
REVIEWS
TRAINING
XERODERMA PIGMENTOSUM
ANIMALS
BIOLOGICAL RECOVERY
BIOLOGICAL REPAIR
DISEASES
DOCUMENT TYPES
MICROORGANISMS
RECOVERY
REPAIR
SKIN DISEASES
VERTEBRATES
560120* - Radiation Effects on Biochemicals
Cells
& Tissue Culture
560130 - Radiation Effects on Microorganisms
560151 - Radiation Effects on Animals- Man