When in space, the cells of living organisms are battered by space radiation that can damage DNA.Credit: NASA
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http://www.astrobio.net/news/article2518.html
A stray bullet rips through the command center, blowing holes in vital equipment and damaging the data archives. Repair teams spring into action. The damage must be patched up quickly or the control systems could go haywire. It's literally a matter of life or death, and a decision must be made: try to fix the damage in place, or move the broken parts to the repair shop.
This is a drama that unfolds every day in the microscopic world inside the cells of astronauts. High-speed particles of space radiation zip through an astronaut's body. Occasionally, one of these particles will strike and break a strand of DNA. Because DNA carries a cell's genetic information and directs its behavior, broken DNA can make a cell grow out of control and even lead to cancer.
Fortunately, cells have teams of repair enzymes that try to fix this damage. Scientists have long thought that these enzymes always go to the site of injury and fix the DNA damage in place. But new research by Francis Cucinotta, the Chief Scientist for NASA's Space Radiation Program at the Johnson Space Center, and his colleagues suggests that cells might sometimes move broken DNA to special "repair shops" instead.\
A stray bullet rips through the command center, blowing holes in vital equipment and damaging the data archives. Repair teams spring into action. The damage must be patched up quickly or the control systems could go haywire. It's literally a matter of life or death, and a decision must be made: try to fix the damage in place, or move the broken parts to the repair shop.
This is a drama that unfolds every day in the microscopic world inside the cells of astronauts. High-speed particles of space radiation zip through an astronaut's body. Occasionally, one of these particles will strike and break a strand of DNA. Because DNA carries a cell's genetic information and directs its behavior, broken DNA can make a cell grow out of control and even lead to cancer.
Fortunately, cells have teams of repair enzymes that try to fix this damage. Scientists have long thought that these enzymes always go to the site of injury and fix the DNA damage in place. But new research by Francis Cucinotta, the Chief Scientist for NASA's Space Radiation Program at the Johnson Space Center, and his colleagues suggests that cells might sometimes move broken DNA to special "repair shops" instead.\
This image shows the DNA repair sites mapped by Costes et al at the NASA Space Radiation LabCostes and his colleagues found when they analyzed images of real cells taken 10 minutes after the cells were irradiated. By attaching fluorescent molecules to some of the repair enzymes, the scientists could see green, glowing spots in the cells wherever DNA was being fixed. Rather than staying along the line where the damage occurred, these glowing spots seemed to congregate at other places within the cells.
"Often, we saw repairs happening near the boundary between the dense area containing all the chromosomes and the surrounding, emptier regions," Cucinotta explains.
Cells might move damaged portions here because it's easier, he suggests. DNA repair involves dozens of different enzymes. Rather than trying to gather all these enzymes at the damage site, it might be more efficient for cells to keep all these enzymes in discrete locations near the chromosomes and bring injured DNA to them.While the idea of DNA repair shops is fairly new, it's not without precedent. When bacteria duplicate their chromosomes, they do so by passing the DNA through a place in the cell called the origin of replication rather than sending the copy-machine enzymes to wherever the DNA happens to be.
Or some similar technology...as Magneurol... Does anyone think this technology .. ? vitamin can be adapted for DNA protection from radiation
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