4 ms·

alright, I'm getting downvoted, so I'll put some important references here: Generally, the research of Jackie Barton showing that DNA is a conductor and specul

alright, I'm getting downvoted, so I'll put some important references here: Generally, the research of Jackie Barton showing that DNA is a conductor and speculating about the role fo 4Fe4S cluster in the BER mechanism was emergent in the late 2000s back when I was a biochemist and not a programmer, but they're now (last 2 years) publishing papers that are fleshing out that hypothesis: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~jkbgrp/Research.htm http://www.its.caltech.edu/~jkbgrp/Research.htm Specific papers: https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-biochem-013118-110644?journalCode=biochem https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-bioche... https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acscentsci.8b00566 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acscentsci.8b00566 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acschembio.8b00347 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acschembio.8b00347 etc.

shpongled 7y ago
This is quite interesting (I'm a biochemist and programmer as well), but I don't see any evidence that non-ionizing radiation could affect DNA repair pathways - that seems like a killer experiment that could (and should) be run to support or disprove this hypothesis. Induce some double strand breaks or DNA nicks, and look at how non-ionizing radiation affects repair rates
- dnautics 7y ago
  I agree that it's a killer experiment and someone should do it. But BER doesn't sense double strand breaks. It senses changes in the curvature of the dna induced by point mutations that are solvable by extracting the base and replacing it templates by the other strand. So you'll want to induce damage with something that causes thymidine dimerization or DNA alkylation.